


the air grows cold around me and you

by pocky_slash



Series: Team Shithead [7]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghost Hunters, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Gen, Ghosts, Graduate School, Haunted Houses, Horror, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-28
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-27 14:18:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8404849
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pocky_slash/pseuds/pocky_slash
Summary: It's the last few weeks of winter break and the endless calm is making Alexander twitchy. Thankfully, Washington approaches Alex and John with a proposal: travel with him to investigate a strange house in rural Pennsylvania. Inherited by a friend of one of Washington's colleagues, there's definitely something odd about it, though another team's paranormal investigation came up inconclusive. Alex thinks it's just the sort of challenge he's been looking for, but the reality is eerier than he'd imagined. With no solid leads on what's in the house and no idea how to combat it, they may have to leave this one unsolved.That is, if they're able to leave at all.(AKA Alex and John do a favor for a friend of Washington's and things get spooky.)





	1. Part One

**Author's Note:**

> HI FOLKS! Happy early Halloween!
> 
> If you're new here, you might want to check out [i saw the whole story unwind](http://archiveofourown.org/works/7927810), which gives some of the background to this world. If 130k seems like too much to do this weekend, just know that Alex, John, and co are graduate students studying ghosts and ghosthunting under Washington. This story takes place right after that story ends.
> 
> For the people I've dragged along this whole way, HI. HOW ARE YOU? HOW WAS YOUR WEEK? SORRY I'M BEHIND ON COMMENTS AGAIN. Thanks, as always, for sticking with this.
> 
> I will note that I usually have at least one person outside of myself beta read these things, but with this one I've been down to the wire, so any mistakes are entirely my own.

"I think you love that dog more than you love me."

John is sitting on the floor, his back propped against the couch, his legs stretched out in front of him. Nelson, one of Washington's dogs, is stretched across his lap. Blue, the other dog, is curled up over his feet. Alex thinks he's never seen John happier, and he's including sex in that.

"I don't love anything more than I love you, dipshit," John says absently. He doesn't look up from Nelson, but he does lean his head against Alex's knee. 

Alex, who has never quite gotten the appeal of keeping a small animal in your house, has resigned himself to owning a pet some day. John will probably want a dog, something that can accompany him on his runs and be happy to see him at the end of the day. Nevermind that he already _has_ someone who's happy to see him at the end of the day. The run thing is legitimate, though.

Jesus, Alex has gotta stop this shit right now--there's no reason to be jealous of a hypothetical dog, not when he's got a very non-hypothetical John Laurens sitting at his feet and casually declaring that there's nothing he loves more than Alex.

He reaches out and pets John's hair, tries to force himself to enjoy the moment instead of being antsy. It's January, it's quiet. The semester hasn't started, neither of them have any work to do at the moment. They've just had a wonderful, homecooked meal for the first time in a month. They're drinking mulled wine, there's a fire going--it's like something off the front of a goddamn greeting card. Lafayette is flying back to the states in a week and classes will start again a few days after that. He should appreciate this lull while he has it, even though it's completely against his nature to stay this still for this long.

Mrs. Washington comes into the living room holding a steaming mug of mulled wine and carrying a tray of coffee cake. "You boys need to come over more often," she says. "The dogs miss having someone who plays with them this much. Patsy used to spoil them rotten before she moved out." She sits on the couch opposite Alex. "What I really wish is that you had come for Christmas."

John tips his head back and looks at Alex with a half smile. In the drive over to the Washingtons', the two of them had placed bets on how long it would be until Mrs. Washington brought up the Christmas invitation they'd turned down. Alex is impressed--Mrs. W beat both of their guesses by at least an hour. She had way more restraint than they thought.

"We appreciated the offer, ma'am," John assures her. "But it was nice to do a thing just the two of us."

Of course, the thing they did was stay in bed all day, eat boxed mac and cheese right out of the pot, and play GTA on the XBox that was their shared Christmas present to each other. It would have been a great time regardless of what other invitations they'd had, but Christmas with the Washingtons just seemed...awkward. It wasn't like Thanksgiving--for Thanksgiving, anyone at school with nowhere else to go was welcome. It was a big party, lively and full of friends and strangers alike. Christmas was just their family--the Washingtons, Martha's son and his fiancee, her daughter, and her sister and brother-in-law. If Lafayette hadn't been with the Noailleses in France, it might have been okay, but the prospect of spending a holiday with just the Washington family seemed...weird.

"As long as you had a good day," she says, sipping her wine.

Washington joins them a moment later. He has a mug in one hand and a portable phone wedged between his ear and his shoulder. For the moment, he's just humming into it occasionally while he settles into the armchair across from the couch.

 _Work_ , Mrs. Washington mouths to them and Alex is suddenly interested in whatever it is Washington is talking about. Given how many times he reminded them to stay the hell out of the labs over break because it was a _break_ , if he's taking this call now, it must be good.

"Mmhm," he says into the phone. He takes a sip of wine. "Mmhm...no...maybe." He glances over at Alex and John. "I might have a team in mind. I'll discuss it with them, and if they agree, we can set it up." 

Alex has a good feeling about this.

Washington and the other person chat vaguely for another few minutes. When he turns off his phone, Alex all but pounces on him.

"What was that?"

"Don't be rude, man," John says, elbowing Alex's legs, but he looks just as eager.

"Are the two of you familiar with Silas Deane?"

Alex is almost offended he has to ask. "Of course. His second book was bullshit."

John elbows him and Mrs. Washington hums warningly while sipping her wine.

"It _was_ pretty short-sighted and from a really narrow white male researcher perspective," John says. "But yeah, of course. He teaches at Cornell?"

"Yes," Washington says. "Apparently he got a call from a friend of his who inherited a house in rural Pennsylvania. There was something of a mysterious history to the house, rumors it was haunted and that was why it had laid dormant for so long. His friend hired an IP team to check out the property, but they claimed they couldn't form a conclusive legal result because their equipment kept malfunctioning. He asked Silas to come in and take a look, but he's on sabbatical this semester and doesn't have any students to assist the investigation. It's only two hours or so away from here, so he called me."

"And you want us to go in," Alex concludes.

"Only if you'd like," Washington says. "Like I said, he had one team out there already. There were some suspicious things going on, but nothing that could be definitively proven to be paranormal as opposed to the usual issues that come with an old house. Their equipment readings were strange and inconclusive. Silas' friend isn't keen on paying for another inconclusive result, so we'll only be paid if we find anything concrete. I'll make sure you get hours logged towards your certification either way, but I won't be offended if you turn it down."

Alex glances John, who's already looking up at him. They have a quick, silent conversation--the arch of John's eyebrow saying, "so?" and the lift of Alex's shoulder saying, "why not?" and John's small nod saying, "it's not as if we have anything better to do."

They turn back to Washington in unison and say, "Okay."

Washington smiles just a little, as much of a pleased reaction as he ever has in front of them. "Excellent. I'll call Silas back and we'll set up the details."

" _Later_ ," Mrs. W says pointedly. "No more work right now. Have a slice of cake and enjoy your wine and let these boys have another few hours off before you start working them to the bone again."

"Love, I think you'll find that these boys--Hamilton in particular--are perfectly capable of working themselves to the bone without my interference," Washington says dryly.

"I know I probably shouldn't be proud of that...." Alex says, grinning, and John elbows his legs again.

"You really shouldn't."

"You should talk," Alex says. He nudges John back with his knee. "How many times did you almost collapse from exhaustion last semester?"

John rolls his eyes. "Don't be an asshole."

"Oh, right, sorry for wanting my boyfriend sane and with all his parts in working order."

"Gentlemen," Mrs. Washington says mildly. Both Alex and John quiet and look chastened. "Have some cake."

"Yes, ma'am," they chorus. As chastisements go, Alex has had worse. Being forced to eat some delicious cake, drink wine, and cuddle on the couch with his boyfriend are pretty excellent directives.

* * *

Over the next three days, Washington fills them in on their assignments and they begin to sketch out a Plan of Action. It's a little strange to be taking orders from Washington--they've fallen into the rhythm of their freelance work, of creating their own plans and making their own decisions. It doesn't help that Washington is also their mentor, their boss, their instructor, and essentially their best friend's dad. Their relationship with Washington is always weird, but it's even weirder as they prepare to go out on a paid job.

"We can set up three sets of infrared sensors in each room. That way, we can cross reference and avoid the weird glitches the last team got," Alex muses Thursday afternoon as the three of them sit around a table in the lab, reviewing the last team's findings. He glances up at Washington and remembers, right, he's not the boss on this one. "I mean--that's my suggestion."

"It's a good idea," Washington says. "Add it to the plan."

They still haven't met Silas Deane; he'll be waiting for them at the site, apparently, and didn't see the point in travelling down to Jersey to spend three days prepping. Alex has some Opinions on that, but he's trying not to judge Deane too harshly until they actually meet him. He did enjoy Deane's first book, after all--there were some excellent insights into expanding parapsych work as the technology they use expands and offers new tools and approaches. Of course, his second book was an angry white man's tire fire, but maybe he was having an off-year.

Thursday night they pack up their bags and Friday morning they meet back at the university, Starbucks in hand. They're all going up together in the department van, which John had protested, but Washington ultimately made several good points about equipment transport, liability, and the fact that, should anything happen to John or Washington, John's car would have to be left at the site until someone could come back to fetch it. John reluctantly agreed, and Alex isn't precisely looking forward to spending the drive in the back with John, who's a terrible passenger.

"I'm just a tiny bit of a control freak," John says as they load in equipment.

"A tiny bit," Alex says.

John punches his arm.

"And I get a little sick, sometimes," John says. "In the backseat, I mean. So, uh. Watch out."

"Hey, Washington, is it too late to back out of this trip?" Alex calls across the parking lot.

John punches his arm again.

In the end, the drive out to Pennsylvania is almost pleasant. Washington listens to NPR until they lose the signal and then plugs in his phone and treats them to a weird playlist that seems to be half 80s R&B and half 90s torch songs. Alex doesn't ask too many questions. John closes his eyes after about twenty minutes in an attempt to ward off car sickness and falls asleep with his head on Alex's shoulder for the rest of the drive. Alex catches up on some reading on his tablet and plays dumb games on his phone and watches the changing landscape as they drive. 

His major exposure to America so far has been New York City and the affluent suburbs of Morris County, New Jersey. Sure, some of their work has taken them to and through lower income neighborhoods, but the type of people who can afford to hire a private IP team tend to be on the wealthier side. They've almost earned back their start-up costs, at which point they can start taking on some pro-bono work, but that's still a little ways off.

The area they're driving through is different. Once they get off the highway, the towns are smaller and most look like they've seen better days. It doesn't help that it's the middle of winter--the vegetation is brown and yellow where it's not entirely bare and there's a bleakness to passing empty parks and shuttered up recreational spots.

Eventually, they turn off the main road that's been pulling them down the main street of small town after small town and venture further into the area. Past the businesses, past the factories, past the worn out, run-down neighborhoods, through the slightly more upscale suburban homes and then up a hill. There's a church and then there's a graveyard and then there are three large, cheerfully painted houses and then there's a wrought iron gate that's open on one side.

Alex gently shakes John's shoulder. "Hey, we're here."

John grumbles something Alex can't make out. His eyelids flutter, eyelashes brushing the spot where Alex's shoulder meets his neck, and he slowly pushes himself up.

"Did I really sleep the whole way?" he asks, then yawns.

"You did," Alex says. "Which I'm not gonna complain about because I was pretty nervous you were gonna puke on me."

John rolls his eyes and then yawns again. He seemingly decides to give into his usual post-nap tendency to be clingy and affectionate. He wraps his arms around Alex and snuggles up to him for the rest of the drive up the long, steep hill towards their destination. Alex indulges him, because Alex is maybe just as much of a romantic as John claims he is. They're going to be working with a stranger, an academic whom Alex doesn't like that much, but who is a fairly respected scholar in their field. It's one thing to be tooth-rottingly affectionate when they're working with their friends or with Washington, but the last thing Alex wants is to seem unprofessional in front of someone he might need a favor from some day.

He presses his nose into John's hair and puts his arm around John's shoulders, his fingers playing with the end of John's ponytail. John glances up at him and then leans up for a kiss. The first one is a dry press of lips, but for the second one, their lips part and--

"Okay, wow, that was gross," Alex says, wrinkling his nose as he pulls away.

"Oh, fuck off," John mutters, burying his face in Alex's shoulder.

"Do you have, like, a mint or something?"

John shoves him, but as the van rolls to a stop, he grabs his bag off of the floor and pulls out a pack of gum. "I'm not offering you any, because you're an asshole."

"And on that note," Washington calls back from the front seat. He cuts the engine and Alex leans forward to peer out the windshield.

The house is a little eerier than the photographs made it seem, though Alex attributes that to the fact that the photos of the exterior that they saw were clearly taken in the spring, on a sunny day. On a cold, grey, overcast winter morning, it's a little more ominous. The dark forest stretching out beyond it doesn't help much. Other than that, it's fairly standard--an old colonial with three floors and a paint job that's seen better days. The front door is open, so Deane must already be inside. His car is parked out front--shiny and new and so obviously expensive that even Alex can tell it's A Big Deal.

He and John hop out of the back of the van. John stretches, rocking up onto his toes and raising his arms in the air as far as they can go. His sweater rides up, revealing a distracting sliver of his lower back and belly, so Alex gives into his baser desires and wraps his arms around John. When John falls back onto his heels, Alex leans in and kisses him.

"See?" he murmurs when he pulls away. 'Away' is maybe a misnomer--their noses are still touching. "Wasn't that better?"

"Shut up," John says, and then ensures that he does so by kissing him again.

Deane doesn't make himself known until the van is halfway unpacked. Alex, John, and Washington are ferrying equipment cases and boxes from the van to the porch when he slips out the front door and walks right past Alex and John to Washington and does the half-hug, half-handshake greeting of straight men everywhere.

"George!" he says.

"Silas," Washington says. "It's great to see you."

"You too!" Deane says. "How's Martha doing? It's been an age since I was down by you."

"She's well," Washington says. "Her name's on the shortlist for superintendant again. I don't know why they keep doing that, they should know by now that wild horses would have to drag her out of that high school."

"She should take them up on it," Deane says. "It would be a nice feather in her cap."

"She hates the bureaucracy of it all," Washington says. "Says she gets enough of that trying to run the high school. But, we can get caught up on that later--Hamilton and Laurens have heard the story a dozen times already."

"Not quite that many," John says, with his most charming smile. It's pretty fucking charming, though Alex is maybe biased.

Deane doesn't seem moved by it. His eyes flicker over both of them, and though his expression doesn't change, something about the set of his mouth and his posture makes Alex feel as though he's been inspected and found to be lacking.

"Silas, these are two of my students, John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton," Washington says, gesturing towards them.

"Nice to meet you, sir," John says, offering Deane his hand. Deane shakes it, and then Alex mumbles a similar greeting and shakes as well. Meeting Deane in person hasn't done anything so far to encourage Alex to lower his hackles.

"Nice to meet you boys," Deane says. "I'm sure Washington told you that this isn't going to be schoolwork; this is a live investigation. It might be dangerous."

Alex bristles and he can tell Washington sees it.

"Alex and John are seasoned investigators," he says before Alex can so much as open his mouth. "They're two of the smartest young men I've ever encountered and they run their own IP business in addition to their school work. They're very good at what they do."

That's maybe the highest compliment Alex has ever heard Washington give...well, anyone. John must think so too, because he leans into Alex's space just enough to nudge their elbows together. He shoots Alex a lopsided grin that Alex can't help but return.

"Well, as long as you're sure they're up to the task."

"We are," John says cheerfully, with just a hint of sharpness, daring Deane to question them again.

"Let's get this equipment inside and we can go over out plan again, yes?" Washington says. He gives Alex and John both a quelling look and Alex tries to tamp down his lingering anger and frustration as he picks up an equipment case to bring inside.

Deane's equipment is stacked neatly in front of what appears to be a sitting room of some kind. The furniture inside of it has been recently uncovered, if the musty white sheets piled in the corner are any indication. It has a large bay window and probably gets the best light in the house.

"I thought we could make this our operating center," Deane says. "I took the liberty of shifting some of the furniture around to make room for our equipment. As long as that works for you gentlemen, we can leave the equipment here for now and I can give you a quick tour of the house."

"It seems perfect," Alex makes himself say with what he hopes is a friendly smile. Deane nods once and forces his own smile.

It's going to be a long weekend.

They do as Deane suggested and leave the equipment in the sitting room. Once the van is emptied, they take their backpacks, stuffed with clothes for the weekend and things to entertain them during the long, boring, wifi-less hours of observation, and follow Deane through the house, room by room. The first floor is fairly simple--sitting room, living room, dining room, library, kitchen. Everything looks normal so far, though there's a strange, uncomfortable look on John's face as they move from room to room.

"Are you okay?" Alex asks quietly, out of Deane's hearing, as they nose around the library.

"Fine," John murmurs. "Just feeling a little weird from the car ride, still."

Alex lets himself believe that for the time being, if only because grilling John about not feeling well will only further Deane's uncomplimentary opinions about them. He squeezes John's hand absently and makes a mental note to check in with him later.

The four of them climb the creaky staircase to the next level, which appears to be mostly bedrooms.

"I took the liberty of airing out four rooms," Deane says. "Three down here and one on the next level. I put my things in one already, but if anyone has any strong preferences, I'm happy to move."

Alex and John look at each other and then at Washington. He knows what he and John are thinking--what's a non-awkward way to tell him they only need three?--and though he can't read Washington's mind based the quirk of his eyebrows the way he can with John, he has a feeling Washington's pondering the same question.

Oh well. Alex has rarely been anything but direct.

"John and I will share a room," he says. When he sees Deane start to protest, he reaches over and takes John's hand pointedly. Deane blinks at them.

"Ah," he says.

"Yeah," Alex says.

"On the plus side," John says. "Fewer linens to wash at the end of the weekend?"

Washington makes a small noise halfway between amused and exasperated. Alex has become very familiar with that noise. Deane still doesn't seem to know how quite to react to any of this, so Alex ignores him, tugging John's hand and going over to peer into each of the rooms on this level. The one closest to Deane's holds a queen bed and the one across the hall a single. He and John exchange a look.

"We'll take this one," Alex says of the single. "You're taller than us."

"Don't be ridiculous, boys," Washington says. "Take the double. I've slept in worse."

"So have we," John says. "Come on, you know how often we manage to sleep on the couch in the lab--this'll be pure luxury compared to that."

"Maybe you'll even drool on me less," Alex says. 

John elbows him. "Look, if you're gonna use me as a pillow, you've gotta deal with the consequences, babe."

Alex rolls his eyes and pulls John into the room before Washington can protest any further. There's another pile of dust covers in the corner, but otherwise the room is pristine. There's an antique dresser, a dressing table, and a rocking chair in addition to the bed. Everything looks sturdy and old enough to be worth something--either the people who passed this house down to Deane's friend left in a hurry, or they were too rich to care about leaving thousands of dollars worth of furniture behind.

"Maybe they're family heirlooms and they wanted them passed on with the house," John murmurs, coming up to stand beside Alex as he looks around the room. Once upon a time, Alex might have been startled at how well he and John can read each other, but by now he's gotten used to it. He answers just as many of John's unvoiced questions, after all.

"Maybe," Alex says. He drops his backpack on the ground near the dresser and walks a slow circuit of the room. Through the open door, he sees Washington and Deane standing in Washington's room and chatting about something. "So, do you think he's racist, classist, homophobic, all of the above, or neither?"

"We already know he's kind of classist and low-key racist," John says. "I mean, we've both read his stupid book. And I think he would have reacted the same way if one of us was a girl and we were fucking, you know?"

"He probably thinks it's unprofessional, like it's not a crazy helpful asset," Alex mutters.

"Well, we'll just have to show him he's wrong by being fucking excellent at our jobs." John pauses thoughtfully. "And if that doesn't work, I can always fight him."

Alex laughs and hip-checks John, not because he doesn't believe it, but rather because he knows that John would absolutely challenge a respected academic to a fist-fight to defend his or Alex's honor.

"You're a little bit crazy," Alex says.

"I'm a lot bit crazy," John amends. "And that's why you like me."

Bags stowed, they follow Deane through the rest of the house, examining the third floor and then returning to the sitting room to begin their set-up. This is easier--he can push any misgivings he has about Silas Deane out of his mind and concentrate on booting up laptops and checking his systems. He hopes, too, that Deane is taking in the ease with which John and Alex work together, the way they fluidly pass equipment back and forth with barely more than a glance, how expertly they wrangle all of their various tools.

Or, maybe not. Alex squints at the screen of his laptop. None of his equipment is calibrating properly.

"Hey, John," he says quietly. "Are you--"

"Yeah," John says without looking up. "Maybe the drive up?"

"Maybe. Because we--"

"Yeah. And last week we--"

"Yeah. So everything should--"

"And the internal systems--"

"Even with the auto settings off--"

"Right, and the sliders--"

"Yeah. It doesn't--"

"--make sense," John finishes. They look up at each other and then at Washington when he clears his throat. He and Deane are both staring at them. Washington looks vaguely amused; Deane looks skeptical.

"This is an old mining town," Washington says. "There are sediment deposits all along this area."

"The other team didn't mention anything about it in their report, unfortunately," Deane says. "To be honest, I'm not impressed with their investigative skills. If we manually adjust the settings to up the baseline about ten points, that should even out all of your readings."

Deane's right, as much as Alex hates to admit it. With the adjustment, his equipment stops going crazy and all of his readouts are within normal range. 

"That's why the data was inconclusive," John says. 

"They did a one-night investigation and didn't recalibrate their equipment," Deane says. "I'm hoping that if we do three nights with our equipment balanced properly, we'll get some more concrete evidence."

"We also came up with some ideas to fill the holes in their data," Alex says. "Adjusting the infrared and camera arrays, switching up some of the audio set-up."

"Their work was pretty shoddy, to be honest," John says. "Two cameras in each room? One environmental sensor? No motion detectors in the hallways?"

"Amateurs," Alex scoffs.

Deane looks back and forth between them, nodding with raised eyebrows. "I have to admit, I'm impressed with you gentlemen."

Alex does not say "is that supposed to be a compliment?" OR "what did you fucking expect?" OR "we're in the best parapsych program in the country" OR "do you really think Washington would have brought a bunch of idiots on a complex, paying job?" He's very proud of his restraint.

"They're some of the smartest men I've ever worked with," Washington says. Having Deane be such a condescending asshole is almost worth it for the amount of compliments Washington has been dropping. "Now, shall we begin to set up the rooms? Hamilton--you take environmental, Laurens--cameras. I'll configure the infrared and Silas can handle the audio. If you boys start on the top floor and we start down here, we shouldn't get in each others' way too much."

"We're on it," John says, and the two of them collect their equipment and flee the room before Alex is tempted to mouth off to Deane again.

He and John work quietly, starting on the third floor and moving slowly from room to room. It's eerie without the conversation from earlier, the day still overcast, the grey light doing little to brighten the musty upstairs rooms. Aside from the bedroom that Deane had cleaned out for them, the rooms are still full of covered furniture and layers of dust. The winter wind is whistling outside, rattling the windows on particularly strong gusts. 

And John is still strangely edgy.

"Are you sure you're alright?" Alex asks as he secures a thermal sensor to the wall, wedged into place between stabilizing pushpins.

"I'm fine," John says automatically around the pushpins between his teeth. He's standing on a chair to place one of the cameras, teetering enough that Alex stands up and hovers next to the chair until the camera is in place and the wire is threaded through the pushpins, hanging down in the proper direction. John hops down and busies himself with his camera bag again, but Alex doesn't miss the tension in his shoulders and the furrow in his brow.

"Seriously," Alex says. "Deane's downstairs and so is Washington. It's just me." He curls his hand around the nape of John's neck. John stops fussing with his cameras and just stands there for a moment, breathing in and out with his head bowed and Alex standing close.

"It's honestly nothing," John finally says. "Not much, at least. I'm just on edge. I wasn't totally brushing you off before--the car ride mixed with Deane being a shithead mixed with how weird this house is...or maybe it has something to do with whatever the hell weird energy is given off by the mines. Maybe whatever's messing with our equipment affects our brain waves too, or something like that. It's fine, really."

They stand there in silence for a moment. Alex finally drops his hand and steps closer, holding gently to John's hips and leaning over to press a gentle kiss to the still-bowed nape of his neck.

"Okay," Alex says, though he's sure it's obvious how skeptical he is. "You'd tell me if something was wrong, right?"

Another pause.

"Yes," John finally says.

Alex bites his lip. "Are you lying?"

"I'm not sure."

Alex sighs. At least he's honest.

He kisses the back of John's neck again and then steps away. "Come on. Let's finish up in here. If we move fast enough, maybe our path won't overlap with Washington and Deane at all."

"Here's hoping," John says. He rolls his shoulders and straightens up, grabbing another couple cameras as he observes the other corner of the room. Alex tries to ignore him and focus on his own work, at least for the moment. He's got a pretty good track record of wriggling information out of John--they can work now, and Alex will worry about John later.

* * *

"I swear to god the walls were bleeding," John is saying, fingers raised in the air in a solemn boy scout salute. "Washington, you were there--you can back me up."

"I didn't see that particular wing of the house," Washington says, "but Laurens and his students all reported the same thing, and I trust them."

They're all tucked into the sitting room, absently watching the monitors for any change. It's getting late--the winter sun has long since set and the take-out containers that held their dinner are mostly empty. They've been taking turns getting up to do regular walkthroughs of the other rooms, just in case something is happening that the equipment is missing, but it was a quiet afternoon and now a quiet evening. And nothing quite passes the time like parapsych war stories.

"I was skeptical then and I remain skeptical now," Alex says. He's sitting on the floor, legs stretched out in front of him, leaning back against the armchair John is perched on. He rests his head against John's knee.

"You're just jealous you didn't get to go on the trip," John says. 

"I mean, I _was_ , but I don't see what that has to do with your blatant exaggeration," Alex says. John reaches out and pulls his hair in retaliation.

"It's an interesting phenomenon," Deane says. "We're still unsure whether it's the spirit affecting one's mind and causing a hallucination, or some sort of projection that makes us see things that can't be there."

Alex doesn't say, _Yes, we're aware of the basics of our field, thank you very much._

"It was a trip," John says. "Scared the shit out of those kids."

"Was it better or worse than your birthday case?" Alex asks. John pulls his hair again.

"I thought we agreed to stop calling it that?"

"I think it was more like you asked us to stop calling it that and we ignored you because it's funny," Alex says. That earns him another tug on his hair. He opens his mouth to tell John _that's your kink, baby, not mine_ , but while Washington may groan and roll his eyes and generally accept their flirting as part of life, Silas Deane is sure to have an opinion or two about it. Instead, he tips his head back to give John a Look that he's sure gets the message across anyway.

"You're an asshole," John says. Alex isn't sure if it's in response to the look or what he said. "Anyway, the case that just happened to be the day before my birthday was definitely more intense, if only because it was unknown and dangerous. It's one thing to see shit like that in a freaky place that you know is harmless. It's another to grapple with an actual level three entity that clearly wants you out of the picture."

"It was crazy," Alex agrees. "The room was cloaked in darkness, shit was flying through the air, and there we were stuck in a salt circle, trying to exorcise the thing as it threw things at us and shook the house in its foundation. I usually laugh when people say parapsych work must be really scary, but that was scary as hell."

"The darkness is an interesting trick," Washington says. "To be honest, when an entity pulls that, it's easier to just do the work with your eyes closed. You don't have to worry about the panic you feel as the darkness closes in, and if your mind _knows_ you can't see, it stops struggling so hard to make anything out."

"Huh," John says. "I've never thought about it that way."

John has moved on to stroking his fingers through Alex's hair instead of pulling it, and, the moment Deane starts trying to explain the logic of fear or what the hell ever he wants to lecture them about, Alex immediately tunes out of the conversation and focuses on the comforting rhythm of John's fingers. Alex isn't a big sleeper, normally, but he didn't get much sleep last night and after the car ride up and dealing with Deane, he's exhausted. He'd love to fall asleep right now, with his head in John's lap, but they've still got another hour and two more patrols of the house before they turn in.

As if summoned by this thoughts, the patrol timer goes off on Washington's phone.

"Silas, I believe you're up," Washington says, and Deane gets to his feet and stretches. He takes a Mel Meter and a camera and strides out of the room. Alex wonders if Deane is as happy to spend some time away from them as they are to spend it away from him.

John's nail drag gently against his scalp and he sighs happily, snuggling up against John's legs. "Do you want me to braid your hair?" John asks.

"You know how to braid hair?"

"Mmhm. It's not hard--I used to braid Mattie's all the time at school. It was like, the one stereotypical gay best friend thing that I could manage. My sisters taught me when we were little; they used to make me do their hair for them."

Well, it's not like they have anything better to do the pass the next hour.

"Sure," he says. He pulls back to look up at John, who has a sweet little half-smile on his face. It makes Alex's knees a little weak. Jesus, eventually he's going to get over being this helpless around his boyfriend, right?

"Let's move to the sofa," John says. 

The sofa has been pushed back towards the opposite wall to make room for one of the folding tables they're using for their equipment. Ish. The table in question, set up just in front of the fireplace, is actually covered with snacks, empty coffee mugs, and the remains of dinner, but still. John sits on the sofa and gestures for Alex to sit on the floor between his knees. He pulls out Alex's ponytail and begins fingercombing his hair out. It's stupid--it's silly.

It's nice.

The only problem is that he has to keep his head straight, which means instead of fucking around on his phone, he's stuck staring at the fireplace and the painting above it. It's a painting of a house, of the house they're sitting in, actually. It's not awful, but it's definitely not the work of a grand master.

"Why is there a painting on the wall of the house we're sitting in?" he asks. "Is that some rich person thing? Sitting in your big house, smugly staring at a painting of your big house?" 

"I wouldn't know," John says. "My mom decorated our house and her tastes were...." His hands pause in Alex's hair. "What's a nice word for 'ugly?'"

Alex snorts. "'Eclectic?'" he suggests. He's keeping himself very still--John rarely speaks about his mother at all and the last thing Alex wants to do is scare him off the topic.

"Let's go with that," John says. "She definitely was _not_ an interior designer. Honestly, that's how I know my dad was crazy about her--even after she died, he left all her ugly paintings and carpets out. The crazy thing is, she was an artist! And, like, not a bad one. She was great at drawing and painting and even photography, but when it came to the house it was like she totally forgot color theory and composition."

"She was an artist?" Alex asks. He files that fact away, memorizes it and holds onto it. John gets his art talent from his mother. That's not entirely unexpected.

"Yeah," John says. "She's the one who really encouraged me to pursue it." 

He finishes up the braid and snaps the elastic into place again. When his hands drop away, Alex turns to look up at him.

"How do I look?" he asks.

"Like you haven't slept in a month," John replies. "Your hair is cute, though." 

Alex punches his arm and then climbs up onto the couch and onto John's lap. God, he really is exhausted. 

"So, no ugly paintings of your house?"

John shakes his head. "Ugly paintings of lots of other things, but not the house."

Alex rests his head on John's shoulder. "Like what?"

"Oh, god, let me tell you about mom's friend, the goat farmer, and his wife, the abstract artist."

Alex smothers his laughter in John's shoulder and closes his eyes. "Okay, go on. Tell me about them."

Alex doesn't mean to fall asleep, but one minute, John is telling him about the series of smudgy brown paintings his mother bought from this weird family friend and the next minute, John is shaking him gently.

"Babe, come on," John says. "It's bedtime for real."

Alex blinks rapidly and raises his head from John's shoulder. Deane is gathering his things and Washington is walking between the monitors, checking all of them briefly. Shit. He was asleep for a whole hour.

"Sorry," he groans.

"Don't ever apologize for falling asleep on me," John says. "A, you always fucking need it, and b, you're fucking adorable."

Alex half-heartedly flips John off as he struggles to untangle himself from the couch and shake the sleep out of his heavy limbs. They grab their bags and do their own equipment checks, then trudge up the stairs to their bedroom. Changing into pajamas in the cold of the room is certainly bracing, but it doesn't do much to wake Alex up any further. No, he climbs into bed and lets John shift him around as he climbs in behind. He kisses John once and closes his eyes and immediately drops back down into sleep.

* * *

If the bed were larger, Alex probably wouldn't have woken up.

As it stands, he and John are wedged fairly tightly onto the single mattress, their limbs tangled together, their shoulders curled uncomfortably to fit into the space. So, when John shudders and gasps and startles out of sleep, Alex is pulled right along with him.

John sits up, breathing hard, the sound loud in the silence of the bedroom.

"Baby, what's wrong?" Alex mumbles. He can barely open his eyes, he's so tired, awkwardly petting John's back and blinking hard to keep from falling back to sleep.

"Nothing," John says on a long exhale. "I had a weird dream."

"Can you go back to sleep?" Alex asks.

"I...I don't know, yet."

Goddammit. So much for sleeping.

Alex pushes himself up and drapes himself over John's back. He's sweating and still breathing hard. "Sssssh. Ssssssssh, take a deep breath."

John does as instructed, then takes another and another until he's no longer panting. Alex rises and falls with each breath John takes, his arms wrapped around John's stomach securely. The bedroom is freezing outside of the cocoon of blankets and body heat, but John's skin is almost feverish and Alex has to struggle not to drift back off to sleep as he soaks it in and waits for John's breathing to even out again.

"Do you know where you are?" he asks once John has settled some.

"Yeah," John says. "That house out in Pennsylvania."

"Do you know who you are?"

"What the hell kind of question is that? Jesus, I'm not _disassociating_ , I had a bad dream."

Alex rolls his eyes. "Do you know who I am?"

"My shithead boyfriend," John says. "I know you're trying to be helpful, but--"

"Do you remember what your dream was about?"

John falters. He covers Alex's hands with his own and doesn't say anything for the length of five long breaths. "I--"

And then he isn't saying anything because there's some horrible noise coming from downstairs.

It's a crash of some kind--something falling, something getting crushed, maybe something breaking inward. Alex and John sit frozen for a moment and then stumble out of bed tripping over each other in their haste. Alex grabs his phone and turns on the flashlight; John grabs the camera sitting on the dresser. They rush out into the hallway the same time as Washington, and, only a moment later, Deane joins them as well.

"What was--" he starts to ask, but Alex and John are already taking the stairs two at a time, skidding onto the ground floor and glancing around the various entryways. They stumble to a stop in front of the sitting room at the same time.

The painting, the big one of the house, has fallen off of the wall. How it missed their array of laptops, Alex doesn't know, but it did hit the folding table they had used for dinner. Everything they'd left on the table has been knocked to the floor. Pieces of the frame are in jagged splinters. There's a large, foreboding tear in the canvas, a rip right through the center of the house.

"Well, that's a little on point," John murmurs.

Washington and Deane come up behind them, peering into the room. Washington makes a quiet, concerned noise under his breath.

"Was it paranormal?" Deane asks.

John points to the wall, where the rusty picture wire is still clinging to a nail. "Could be, or it could just be old."

"Only one way to find out," Alex says. He starts to move towards the monitors when John's arm shoots out in front of him to keep him from going any further.

"Alexander!" he snaps in warning. "You're not wearing shoes."

Alex squints at the floor and sees that the jumbo box of pushpins they'd left on the table has not only fallen to the ground, but burst open and scattered across the floor. "I'll be careful," he says.

"You'll both go upstairs and put on shoes," Washington says. "Martha will kill me if I bring one or both of you home with tetanus." 

"You don't get tetanus from clean thumbtacks," Alex says, but at Washington's quelling look, he sighs. 

"Get mine too?" John asks as Alex slips away.

"Why should I do that?"

"Because you love me," John says without turning around.

Alex sighs again. "One day that's gonna stop working."

"No it's not," John says.

"No, it's not," Alex agrees grudgingly.

He moves as quickly as he can through the house, back upstairs, and then down with his sneakers and John's both in hand. Washington and Deane are carefully moving through the sitting room, and by the time Alex and John get their shoes on, both of the men are frowning at different laptop screens.

"What's going on?" he asks. "What did we catch on camera?"

John's already picking his way over to the video monitor, so Alex heads to the infrared monitor. It's possible that John was right and the picture wire was just old, but the coincidence is too great. There's got to be something--

"There's nothing," Washington says. "The barest blip on the EMF--it could be anything. It's certainly not sustained long enough or spiked high enough to be concrete evidence."

"Audio is the same," Deane says. "Nothing aside from the snap of the wire and the crash from the picture falling. Environmental is stable, too. The room was cold and remained cold."

Well, fuck.

Alex zips back through the thermal recordings and then zips back forward. There's nothing out of the ordinary except....

"The thermal recording glitched for a few seconds," he tells everyone. "It's just fuzzy and flickering, like the connection was loose."

"What time?" John asks.

Alex glances at the timestamp. "2:06."

John turns his laptop towards Alex. "I've got a video disruption at 2:06, too. Same thing--it's like someone jiggled the wires. It flickers for a few seconds and then it's back to normal."

"So either something disrupted it..." Alex starts.

"...or there was a power blip that affected the only things hooked up to electric power," John concludes. "Which means--"

"--we don't know anything more than we did when we came down," Alex says. He looks at Washington and Deane for guidance, but they seem as disappointed and flummoxed as he and John.

"Well," Washington says, "it looks like there's nothing else we can do tonight. Let's head back to bed--we can clean up in the morning."

Alex takes another look around the room--everything else is exactly where they left it. In fact, if you were standing with your back to the broken picture, the room would look untouched. Maybe it _was_ just a rusty old wire at the end of its life, jostled by so many people moving around a previously vacant house.

"Boys," Washington says a little more firmly. 

"Right, right," Alex says. "In the morning." 

John, too, looks thoughtful, staring out into empty space, a small frown leaving a crease between his eyebrows.

"Hey," Alex says, and John looks up. Alex holds out his hand, and John takes it without a word. They both look around the room one more time and then turn back towards the stairs to return to bed.

"It's weird," John says once they're taking their shoes off again, shivering and crawling back under the still-warm covers. Alex waits for an elaboration, but it never comes; John just rests his head on Alex's shoulder, still looking a little thoughtful, but not saying anything more. Alex pets his tangled hair for a few minutes, but it's not long until Alex finds himself falling back to sleep.

* * *

They clean up the sitting room and review the rest of the night's data while they eat breakfast. In the grey light of morning--it's another freezing, overcast day, because of course--the mess doesn't seem as bad as it did the night before. Their plastic drinking cups and travel mugs were all knocked to the floor, as was a bag of pretzels and a box of animal crackers. Another bag of chips was crushed under the frame and the binders that had been on the edge of the table were nudged to the floor. A quick pass with a broom takes care of the pushpins, the splintered wood, the bits of pretzel, and the animal cracker crumbs all at once.

The review of data is less straight forward.

"Something has to be here," Alex murmurs, zipping through the environmental data for the third time. He rubs at his eyes. Shit, he's still so tired. "There's just...there's just nothing."

"'If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail,'" Deane says. 

Alex scowls. "What's that supposed to mean?"

"It's an old saying that--"

"No, no," Alex says. "I know what it _means_ , I don't see how it's _relevant_."

"Well," Deane says, turning in his chair to look at Alex directly. Alex gets the feeling that he wishes he was on a stage or podium so he could more fully look down on him. "We're parapsychologists. Of course we expect every disturbance to be paranormal, but it's entirely possible that this is just an old house and you're looking for something because you want to find it, not because it's logically there."

Alex tries not to let his frustration show on his face, but he's been told that's frequently a losing battle. Based on Deane's expression, it's definitely a battle he's lost today.

"That's because we were _hired_ to find a paranormal explanation," Alex says. "If we were exterminators, I'd be looking for termites. We're not home inspectors, we're not experts on, I don't know, old shit. We're not here to diagnose that, we're here to diagnose a possible paranormal issue."

"My point remains," Deane says. "We should be open to all possibilities so we don't miss anything."

"And I'm telling you," Alex says, his face heating up, "that we're not going to miss anything by _looking for what we came here to look for_."

"There's no need to raise your voice," Deane says, and before Alexander can show Deane exactly how loud his voice can get, Washington's hand comes down hard on Alex's shoulder.

"Hamilton, why don't you go help Laurens with the dishes?" he says, squeezing Alex's shoulder hard enough to get his point across.

"Whatever," Alex mutters, and stalks away, forcing himself not to look over his shoulder. If he does and he sees Deane's smug face, he doesn't think Washington will be able to hold him back.

It doesn't even make sense--it's like the guy is purposely being obtuse just so he has an excuse to act superior. Alex isn't stupid--if they end up finding no trace of spirits after three days, of course he'll tell the homeowner that the house is clean and the issues are structural. But he _knows_ there's something more to it. Washington must know too, or else he wouldn't waste their time, and odds are Deane wouldn't have called Washington at all if he was so sure the house was clean.

Fucking old white men. Alex is sick of them.

John isn't doing the dishes when Alex gets to the kitchen. The plates and cups and silverware from the night before are all drying in the rack and the counter has been wiped down. Instead, he's standing next to the coffeemaker, holding a cup of coffee in his hands and staring into space. His expression is odd and Alex is reminded of last night, of the way that John sat up straight in bed after his nightmare. He thought that only happened in movies. All day yesterday, too, John was a little off. It could be a weird reaction to the tension that Deane is causing or the start of one of his depressive episodes, or maybe even the onset of a cold, but it twists Alex's stomach no matter what the root cause.

"Hey," Alex says softly, hoping not to startle John. He's swept up enough broken shit today, he doesn't want to add a coffee mug to the list. But John nods slightly in acknowledgement and takes a sip of his coffee without jumping. Alex leans against the counter next to him and presses their arms together. "What's up?"

"Nothing," John says. He still doesn't look at Alex, his eyes unfocused. "Coffee."

"I see that."

John hums, but doesn't say anything else. Alex leans over and presses a kiss to John's shoulder, against the scratchy fabric of his sweater. This time, John does react, blinking slowly and turning to Alex. He smiles just a little and touches Alex's cheek, his fingers warm from his coffee mug.

"Hey," he says.

"Hi," Alex says. "You back here with me?"

"Yeah, sorry about that," John says. He smiles wryly, but at least his eyes are focused on Alex. "I didn't get a lot of sleep last night. That bed was small as fuck--we should have taken Washington up on his offer."

"Probably," Alex says. He's only half listening as he inspects every millimeter of John's face for a clue to his discomfort. 

"Alex, I'm fine, really." Okay, maybe the inspection isn't as subtle as Alex hoped. "I'm tired, I'm frustrated, and I'm pissed that what should be a really interesting weekend is being fucked up by Silas Deane being an asshole." Alex frowns. "And sliding from amused into annoyed at the fact that you won't leave me alone," he adds pointedly.

"I'm just worried," Alex says.

"Yeah, I got that," John says. He knocks their shoulders together. "I'm fine." He raises a single eyebrow and Alex gives in and flops against him, pushing his concern out of his mind for the time being.

"He's such an asshole," Alex mutters. He steals John's coffee and takes a long swallow. It's hot, but he appreciates the burn in the cold of the kitchen. They're heating the place with electric heaters that they shuffle from one room to the next, and Alex's Carribean ass was not meant for indoor temperatures this low. 

John puts his arm around Alex's shoulders and pulls him that much closer. He's not about to complain--John runs hot, like an angry, freckled furnace, and Alex has no shame about cuddling up to him to leech away his body heat. He takes another long drink of John's coffee as John presses a kiss to the top of his head.

"This would be way more fun if he wasn't around, yeah," he says. "What a fucking smug asshole."

" _I'm_ a smug asshole," Alex says. "He's a condescending prick."

John chuckles. "Do you think Washington actually likes him or just puts up with him for political reasons?"

"I have trouble believing Washington really likes _anyone_ aside from Mrs. W and Laf, so."

"What about you?" John asks.

"Who do I like?" Alex asks.

"No," John says. "Washington likes _you_."

"Washington likes _you_ ," Alex counters. "You're like his tiny, angry photography prodigy."

"You're an _inch_ taller than me!" John tugs his ponytail in retaliation. Alex just smiles into John's coffee and takes another sip. "Am I gonna get that back at some point, or...?"

Alex is about to tell John that he should get his own, entirely because he's pretty sure John'll make an _excellent_ face at that suggestion, when Washington strides into the room, shaking his head to himself.

"Sir?" John says.

"Nothing," Washington says, glancing over his shoulder. Alex is pretty sure that means they were right about Washington not even liking Deane all that much. "Since it appears having you and Silas working in the same space this morning may be ill-advised, I'd like the two of you to take a walk around the grounds once you're finished with your coffee. Photos, audio, video, EMF--whatever you think is best and can manage to carry with you. Feel free to, ah, take your time."

"Right." Message received: come back when you're less likely to verbally eviscerate my friend. "Let me just finish my coffee."

" _My_ coffee," John says, grabbing it back from him. There's a little more color in his cheeks than there was when Alex first came in.

"Just tell us when you go out and bring a phone with you," Washington says. He waves his hand at them dismissively. "And don't do anything I wouldn't do."

He leaves them in the kitchen, his footsteps headed back towards the sitting room.

"I don't know if he thinks we're going to do something incredibly reckless or if he thinks we're going to go out in the woods and have sex," Alex muses.

"Hm," John says. "Could go either way." He kisses Alex's cheek and puts the coffee mug on the counter, slipping out of the room before Alex can properly react.

"Hey, wait, does that mean I'm gonna get lucky?" he shouts after John, racing to follow his laughter up the stairs and back to their room.

* * *

They see the first dead bird about five yards from the house. The tree line is still several feet away, and Alex is focused on it. He wouldn't have noticed the bird at all, except John says, "Watch your step!" and he glances down before he can step on it.

It's because he's looking down that he sees the second dead bird.

Or maybe "bird" isn't the right word. What he sees, half covered by snow and dead leaves, is some bones. When he pushes the snow and debris out of the way, it becomes clear that it was, at one point, before the winter, a bird.

"Huh," he says, and they keep going.

It's a cold day and still overcast, but the air is crisp and Alex doesn't mind the cold as much when he's bundled in his jacket and scarf, with fingerless mittens on and John at his elbow. It's nice to not be in the house--even when they're not speaking, just being around Silas Deane is beginning to irritate him. He doesn't like the way Deane looks at John. He's sure Deane looks at him the same way, but for some reason it's the disrespect that's clear on his face when he's looking at John that makes Alex rankle.

They wander through the trees, which are all either bare or clinging to a few stubborn, grey leaves that are tugged by periodic gusts of winter wind. John occasionally stops to take photos and Alex halfheartedly waves his Mel Meter around, a microphone clipped to his shoulder on the off chance they pick up an EVP in the woods. It's actually peaceful, a nice respite from the itchy feeling he gets in the house.

Then he sees the third dead bird.

Two is a coincidence. Three is a pattern. He slows to a stop and kneels down to look closer. Like the first bird, it's on top of the snow and fresh enough that it hasn't been picked up or pulled apart by other animals yet. It doesn't seem injured--it's not bleeding, it's not as if something attacked it and left it for dead.

John notices his pause and loops back around towards him.

"Lean back," John says. Alex does as instructed, and John takes a series of photos, then lowers his camera. "Is that the second dead bird?"

"Third," Alex says. "I saw a skeleton back there, too."

John frowns, then offers Alex a hand to pull him back to his feet.

"Birds just die sometimes," Alex says half-heartedly.

"Yeah, I guess they do."

Not five feet further down the path, they see the fourth and fifth dead birds. As John takes photos of them, Alex adjusts his worldview and looks out over the woods around them, rather than the path in front of him.

"Holy shit," he murmurs, and grabs John's shoulder to get his attention. "Look--just...look."

John looks first at Alex in confusion and then quickly out at the landscape around them. Then he freezes and begins to look more slowly, his mouth falling open.

Because there's the sixth dead bird and the seventh and the twenty-seventh and way more than Alex can count. There are dead birds littering the floor of the forest.

"Holy shit," John repeats. Mechanically, he lifts his camera and starts snapping pictures. "This is...holy shit."

John wanders further into the forest, still taking photos, and Alex hurries after him. He can't help the shiver that streaks down his spine. The forest has abruptly stopped being peaceful and started being pretty fucking creepy. His Mel Meter is still silent--all of the EMF and temperature and pressure levels around them are normal. There isn't anything to indicate that there's a presence in the forest, that there's a spirit poised to attack them, but that doesn't stop Alex from walking so closely behind John that he almost steps on his heels more than once.

Dead animals are a frequent sign of spirit activity. Not just spirit activity--dead animals mean an entity, and a powerful one. At least a level three, but more likely a level four or five. And this many dead animals... _fuck_.

But, then, this many dead animals could also mean about a dozen other things. A bird sickness. An environmental issue. Flocks of birds do, occasionally, all drop dead at once and fall out of the sky.

"If there really is a spirit here, it's definitely gaslighting us," Alex mutters. John kneels down to get closer to one of the birds, to take a closer photo. 

"You're not wrong," John says. He stands up slowly and finally lowers the camera. He looks spooked when he meets Alex's eyes, and Alex doesn't blame him. "Alex, what is this? How can all of this--the birds, the fucking painting, all of it--how can it happen without any evidence? That's not how this works! That's not--it's _science_."

"I know," Alex says. He looks, again, at the dead birds littering the forest floor. "Maybe it's not. Maybe it really is just a weird coincidence. The house is old, we're in the middle of fucking nowhere in a manufacturing town. Who knows what kind of shit is polluting the air?"

John nods, but he's looking around again too, chewing on his lower lip. "Jesus, I can't fucking decide which is worse: staying out here and catching bird flu or going back to the house and spending the afternoon with Deane."

A huff of laughter escapes Alex and he relaxes just a little. Whatever the hell this is, at least he's here with John. The two of them have yet to encounter anything they can't handle together.

"Let's head back," Alex says. "We can take a look at the photos alone in our room or something if we have to."

"Deane'll probably think we're fucking," John says.

Alex raises his eyebrows. "Then maybe we should actually fuck. You know. If he's gonna think it anyway."

John punches his arm, but he doesn't say 'no,' and isn't that what's really important? He takes Alex's hand, though, and they silently pick their way back through the trees and dead birds. When they get in sight of the house, Alex is mentally scripting their escape already, some excuse they can use to do their afternoon work alone somewhere. He thinks Washington won't need much persuading, and it's not like he gives a shit what Deane thinks.

That line of thought peters out, though, once they turn the corner. They have to walk past the library window before they can swing around to the kitchen, but there is no library window anymore. Or rather, the big bay window has been shattered. There's glass all over the window seat and in the grass and snow outside the window and Washington and Deane are peering out of it in confusion. A large tree branch lies directly beneath the window, the end jagged, as if it was wrenched from the tree.

"What happened?" John asks once they're close enough to be heard.

"We don't know," Washington says.

"We were in the other room when we heard the glass break," Deane says. "We came in and this window was shattered. It looks like it may have been that tree branch, but...." He trails off and raises his eyebrows significantly. Great. Yet another weird thing that could be a ghost or could be coincidence. Just what they need.

"We checked the monitors," Washington adds before Alex can ask. "Nothing significant. Come inside and help us close this up and we'll discuss how to proceed."

Washington and Deane gingerly step back from the window. It's hard to tell if the glass broke from the inside out or the outside in. The way the tree branch is lying on the ground could very well point to a particularly strong gust of wind, but the number of coincidences is getting more absurd by the minute. Something is happening here, Alex can _feel it_.

"I don't like this," John says quietly. "This shouldn't be happening--none of this should be happening. _How_ is this happening?"

"If we can't figure out what's causing this, how do we know how to get rid of it?" Alex asks in an equally low voice.

Neither of them have answers, though. And, though he doubts Washington has any better idea of what's going on and how to combat it, the best they can do is go inside and figure out what to do next.


	2. Part Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alex and John examine the house from top to bottom. At least, they think they do.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HI FOLKS. Sorry this is so late--guess who has two thumbs and a debilitating ear ache that isn't an infection so there's nothing the doctor can do except charge a co-pay and recommend hot tea and compresses?
> 
> Me. It's me. Surprise!
> 
> So, this is super late, but it's still Monday in Boston, so there you have it. Happy Halloween, friends! Watch _I Am the Pretty Thing That Lives in the House_ on Netflix, I just finished it and I'm in love.

There's not much by way of evidence in the library, once Alex and John get inside. Nothing else seems out of place and the window break is very contained: glass is littered across the window seat and across the ground just outside the window, but that's all. It's a spread that's consistent with a break from a tree branch, but all these coincidences are setting off warning bells in Alex's head.

It's cold and windy enough that there's no way to close the window up well with the materials available to them. They secure one of the dust cloths over the window with pushpins and lock the library door, shoving a towel along the space between the door and the floor in an effort to keep the house from getting too much colder. Once the room is closed up, they return to the sitting room. Washington wastes no time--he pulls out a map and pins it to the wall backwards, so that the blank side is facing them. Across the top he writes _INCIDENTS_ in black sharpie, then turns back to them

"The painting was what? Around 2am?" he asks.

"Yeah," John says. "2:06."

Washington writes _Painting falls - 2:06am._

"And the window was just now," Deane says. He glances at his watch. "It's 10:17, so let's say 10 am."

Washington adds _Library window - 10am_.

"And the noises were earlier than that," Washington says. "A little before we came downstairs around 8 am, correct?"

Alex frowns. John and Deane are frowning too.

"Noises?" Alex ventures.

"This morning," Washington clarifies. "The thumping and the tapping."

Alex and John look at each other, then look back at Washington.

"I didn't hear any noises," Alex says. "We were up around then, I think, right?"

"Yeah," John says. "We were talking, but not very loudly, and we were only across the hall."

Washington looks at Deane, who shakes his head. To his credit, he doesn't look rattled--he merely writes _Thumping and tapping - 8 am - GW_.

"Okay," he says. "Anything else?"

"When we were walking around the grounds and the woods we saw a lot of dead birds," Alex says.

" _A lot_ ," John emphasizes. "Whatever you're imagining, it's not enough." He fiddles with his camera for a moment and then hands it to Washington, whose eyes widen as he clicks through the photos.

"They were already dead when we got there," Alex says, "so I'm not sure when, exactly, they died, but it couldn't have been too long ago--none of them have been like...eaten or anything."

Washington hands the camera to Deane and writes _Dead birds - ???_ on the map. "Anything else?"

Alex hesitates. John's been acting a little weird, yes, but if it was relevant, he'd probably say something? Right? And if he's not saying anything and Alex brings it up, he'll probably kill Alex. Right? Jesus, he's too tired to deal with this.

"That's all we have," John says, making the decision for him.

Washington nods and turns to stare at the map. He's humming to himself and looks about as flummoxed as Alex has ever seen him. He's not surprised--usually if there are ghostly happenings some place, there's also ample scientific evidence. There should be energy spikes, there should be photos and videos, there should be evidence on their thermal cameras, there should be alarms from their motion sensors. Contrary to old stories and Hollywood lore, spirits always leave behind some sort of evidence. It's usually invisible, but it's there, it's measurable. To have strange happenings and no concrete data to work with is nearly unheard of.

In Alex's mind, there are three possibilities: 1) There really is nothing going on and all of these things are the natural result of a parade of people tramping around an old house; 2) There's a spirit that's so powerful and so self-aware that it's able to manipulate their equipment and find ways of circumventing their set-up; or 3) Whatever they're dealing with is something else entirely, something new and unknown.

He's not sure he likes any of the options.

"We're navigating this one blind, and our first priority should be to try and clear the air, see if we can shed any light on what we're really dealing with," Washington finally says. "Our usual array is obviously not catching this thing, if it exists, and while I normally advocate for research to be done once initial data has been collected, anything that can help right now would be useful. Two of us will stay here and do a meticulous sweep of every inch of the house, floor to ceiling, and the other two will head into town. I spoke with someone at the historical society earlier this week and they're willing to open the reading rooms to us for research purposes. Now, would one of you gentlemen like the accompany me to the historical society, or would you rather stay here and sweep the house?"

John looks at Washington warily and then back to Alex. "Just one of us?" he asks.

"Just one," Washington confirms. 

John looks between Alex and Washington again.

"Just go with him." Alex pitches his voice soft, low, so only John can hear him. "I'll be fine here." There's a solid chance that whatever's giving John that hollow, distant look will clear up if he heads into town for a few hours. Alleviating John's stress is definitely worth an afternoon putting up with Silas Deane.

"No. No, I want to stay with you. I'd probably be more useful doing this than research." 

"Gentlemen?" Washington asks.

"We'll stay here," John says before Alex can tell Washington to take John with him. "We'll start upstairs, work our way down."

Washington studies them for a moment and then nods. "We'll call you with any news and be back with dinner before it gets dark."

"And we'll let you know if anything turns up here," John says. 

With that decision made, their impromptu meeting is over. Deane and Washington start discussing research tactics and packing their materials and Alex sits down to start checking batteries and memory cards in all of his equipment. He should have argued for John to go with Washington--he should have turned it into A Thing. It would have pissed John off, but Alex finds he doesn't care about John's feelings as much as he cares about John's well-being. His brain just feels so slow today--it was like he couldn't think fast enough to come up with an argument, even though half a dozen are occurring to him now. 

He rubs his temples and closes his eyes. Normally, he has no issue operating on this little sleep, but he feels the exhaustion down in his bones today. His mind is fogged with it--maybe if they get done before Washington and Deane come back, they can take a nap.

They drag their equipment up to the third floor and start a long, painstaking examination of each room, each inch of hallway, each crack in the plaster. They're unusually quiet--Alex needs to focus all of his concentration on the task at hand to keep from nodding off and John is still jumpy. It doesn't help that nothing about the investigation is exciting enough to warrant an adrenaline spike or even an interesting distraction. The rooms are all clean, the hallways silent, the floors and walls cool and unremarkable. John's photos show nothing that isn't visible to the naked eye, and though there are tests and filters he can employ later to dig deeper into each image, Alex has a feeling it's unlikely they'll find anything. 

On the second floor, they pause in their bedroom so John can switch out camera lenses, just to see if it has any effect on their results. Alex sits on the edge of the bed to wait for him, idly picking at loose strands of yarn in the heavy blanket draped over the bed. He has to blink hard to keep himself awake--they're so close to bed and there's so little worth staying awake for, really--and he must lose the battle eventually, because the next thing he knows, John is shaking his shoulder.

"Alex," he murmurs softly. "Baby, it kills me to wake you up, but now isn't the time."

Alex blinks slowly and gazes up at John.

"Did I fall asleep?" he asks. John nods. "I never fall asleep."

"That's why I hate to wake you. Are you okay?" John sits next to him on the bed and brushes his hair back. "This isn't the first time you've passed out this weekend."

"I'm fine," Alex murmurs, pushing himself up and swallowing a yawn. John gives him a flat look, one eyebrow raised, a skeptical furrow in his brow.

"In case you can't interpret it," he says, "this is my 'How hilarious that when I say "I'm fine," you ignore me, but you expect me to accept it when you say it' face."

Alex flips John off, his movements still sluggish. He stretches and rolls his shoulders. Shit, maybe he's coming down with something--there's really nothing that seems more appealing then grabbing John and crawling back under those blankets and sleeping for another dozen hours. He takes one of John's hands and presses it against his cheek. He's not about to _ask_ John if he's running a fever--that's basically admitting defeat--but if he _is_ running hot, John will notice.

John doesn't say anything, though, he just lets his fingers linger on Alex's cheek, then pushes his hair back again. "You wanna take a break?"

 _Yes_ , Alex thinks, but he shakes his head. "I'm fine," he repeats. "Let's finish up this floor."

John regards him skeptically, and if that's what _he_ looks like every time John insists on doing something beyond what's safe and sane, it's a wonder John hasn't murdered him already.

He pouts and John rolls his eyes. "Jesus, fine, okay," he says. "Let's go."

Alex tries to redouble his focus for the rest of the second floor, examining each reading on each device and even making notes by hand. His body still feels heavy with sleep, though, and after the excruciatingly slow journey down the stairs--stopping on each one to get readings on the step, the wall, the railings--he sits heavily on the bottom step. John sits next to him, carefully putting his camera and tablet on the floor in front of them and then wrapping his arm around Alex's shoulders. Alex wiggles his phone out of his pocket and checks the time--it's barely after one--they have hours, still, before Washington and Deane get back. Then they still have to have dinner and discuss their findings and probably do the usual patrols of the house until after midnight. The thought of being awake for another twelve hours makes him want to sprawl on the floor and give up.

"Alexander, I'm worried about you," John says. He presses his lips against Alex's temple, squeezing him close. "Are you feeling okay? You've been like this since last night."

Has he? He supposes he did fall asleep while they were working and John was braiding his hair. And, yeah, okay, it was hard to get out of bed after John's nightmare. And it took him forever to fully wake up this morning. And he's been bone-tired all morning.

"Long nights catching up to me," Alex says.

"You mean the long nights of playing Halo in your pajamas and sleeping in every morning?" John says.

"Guess that excuse doesn't work on the person I'm spending the long nights with."

"It doesn't," John confirms.

They sit there for a few more long minutes, John stroking Alex's hair, their breathing loud in the quiet house. Alex closes his eyes, head tucked against John's shoulder, and imagines a more pleasant afternoon--some kissing and heavy petting and pressing his bare skin up against John's and curling up under the blankets upstairs and going to sleep....

They have work to do. Shit, they have so much work to do, still, and maybe they _can_ take a break later, but first they need to finish sweeping the main floor and load all their findings onto the laptops in the sitting room. If they can do that, then he can probably get John to suggest a nap and even have him thinking it was his idea in the first place.

He pulls away. Regretfully. John is warm and smells like his stupid shampoo and he's wearing a sweater that he stole from Alex weeks ago, dark green and thick and less baggy than it was on Alex's wiry frame, but still baggy enough that the sleeves hang down to his fingertips. His hair is down, parted haphazardly on one side and Alex's ever-present desire to run his fingers through it is strong.

"Let's finish up," he says. He stands up and John follows, slowly, warily, regarding Alex with a strange mixture of concern and affection and frustration. He steps into Alex's personal space and rests his hands on Alex's hips, squeezing gently and leaning forward to kiss him.

Well, Alex can't deny him that. 

It's a soft, quick kiss. Warm in the cold of the house and almost enough to wake him up.

"Love you," John says when he steps back. Alex smiles automatically, pleased and surprised both.

"Love you too," Alex says. 

The first floor is just as tedious and just as useless, but the rest on the stairs, or maybe the kiss, proves to be invigorating. They move through every inch of the first floor at a snail's pace, documenting everything. There's no breakthrough, no amazing discovery that puts their weekend into perspective. They finish with just as few answers as they started, inputting their new data into the computers in the sitting room and frowning at it contemplatively.

"Maybe we're thinking about this the wrong way," John says.

Alex tilts his chair back onto its back legs and stares up at the ceiling. "What's the right way, then?"

"I don't know," John admits. "But there has to be something we're missing. We're geniuses. _You're_ a genius. Washington is _the_ genius. I honestly can't think of a sharper mind to have out here, you know?"

"So we have to be missing something?" Alex says.

"Yeah," John says. "I don't know what the alternative could be."

Alex falls forward, the front two legs of his chair hitting the floor with a thump. He rests his elbows on the table and stares at the numbers on the screen. Even if he adjusts back down to the regular baseline, not taking the ten point calibration into account, there's no activity that could account for what's been happening. A broken window, a painting ripped from the wall, something strong enough to kill all of the birds in the area? A ten point spike wouldn't account for the strength needed to do any of that.

"I'm gonna look at the video feeds again," John says on a sigh.

"I'm gonna stare at the fucking ceiling, since it'll do about as much good," Alex mutters. He flops forward, covering his head with his arms. He hears John's chair drag across the floor and then John's hands are pressed back against his shoulders. "You gonna rub my back? Cause I can think of something better you can rub."

"You'd fall asleep before you could even finish, smartass," John says, digging his thumbs into the knots between Alex's shoulder blades.

"I think I got my second wind," Alex murmurs. 

"Yeah, right." John pushes Alex's hair aside and presses a kiss to the back of his neck. "Just sleep, babe."

"Don't wanna sleep, wanna put my hands all over your body." Alex smirks, even though John can't possibly see it from this angle.

"You talk a good game," John murmurs, kissing his way down from Alex's hairline to the collar of his shirt, "but I don't think you're gonna fulfill your end of the bargain." 

"Hmm." Alex hums and stretches and reaches behind him, grabbing John's thigh and pulling him closer. "Only one way to find out." 

He feels John's smile against the back of his neck. One of John's hands creeps down around his side and starts to push his t-shirt and sweater up, sliding against his skin. Alex lifts his head and tips it back, resting the back of his head on John's shoulder and grinning lazily at him. John nuzzles his cheek and then kisses behind his ear and at joint of his jaw and at the corner of his mouth.

"Maybe we should go upstairs?" Alex suggests. He reaches up and slides his hand into John's hair and just the act of putting his fingers in John's hair shouldn't be such a turn on, _and yet_....

"Mm, I suppose...." John says.

And then the sink explodes.

Granted, at first he doesn't know that it's the sink and explode isn't quite the correct word. At first, it's just a loud bang, a thud, and a sound like the spray of a shower. Alex and John both freeze for an embarrassingly long time before they scamper to their feet and skid out of the sitting room and into the kitchen.

The faucet has broken apart, the actual faucet bit broken clean off and sitting on the ground against the opposite wall. There's a dent in the wall, maybe half an inch deep--the metal fixture hit the wall with no small amount of force. That's a secondary issue, however, the primary issue being the water spraying all across the room.

" _Shit_!" John hisses. He drops to his knees in front of the sink and pulls open the cabinets beneath it. Alex grabs a dish towel and tries to hold it over the gushing pipe, but it does little to stop the water flow. " _Shit!_ " John repeats.

"What?" Alex asks.

"I can't find the water shut off!" John says. "It should be right under here!"

"This house was built a zillion years ago," Alex reminds him. "What does it look like?"

"Like two little knobs, one for hot and one for cold," John says. He's opening the other lower cabinets, now. "Or, fuck, if it's old--I don't know, look for a valve or a handle connected to a pipe!"

Alex is still skeptical that he'll know what it looks like when he sees it, but he opens the pantry closet and looks, then crawls over to the cabinets across from it while John curses and climbs further under the sink. Under the second set of cabinets Alex opens, he sees a pipe, at least. There's no valve, but he follows it to the wall and then it goes through the wall and he's stumped, sitting back on his heels. He scrambles up to his feet and rushes out of the kitchen to see if he can trace it to the other side. There's a closet there, and he pulls open the door and shoves a bunch of musty coats to the side. There's no pipes--they must have turned downward or right or left or something.

Except why would they turn downward? There's nowhere to go.

Alex blinks slowly, something about the closet fighting to get through his exhaustion and confusion. This is a weird place for a coat closet. And it's small, even by old-timey closet sizes. He looks around, and then takes a step backwards. His footsteps echo strangely, so he steps forward again. Then he stomps his foot.

"I found it!" John shouts from the kitchen, and abruptly the spraying sound cuts off and all Alex can hear is a steady drip and John's heavy breathing in the other room. " _Fuck_."

Alex abandons the closet and rushes back to the kitchen. There's probably at least an inch of water on the floor and John is soaked. Alex abruptly realizes that he's fairly soaked as well. Soaked and fucking freezing.

"Jesus," he murmurs.

"It was all the fuck over on the other side," John says, gesturing towards the corner of the cabinets. "Why it couldn't be under the sink, who the fuck knows." He turns around, his shoes making a sloshing noise in the water on the floor. "What a fucking mess."

"Do we mop it up?" Alex says. "Or would it make more sense to just start fucking bailing it out the back door?"

"Maybe mopping it out the door?" John says. "Like, trying to sweep it out?"

"Have you seen a mop?" Alex asks.

"No," John says. "Maybe in that closet out in the hall?"

"Oh, right," Alex says. He doesn't know how he fucking forgot. "When I was looking to shut off the water, I found--I think this place has a cellar. I think the closet in the hall used to be the door to the cellar."

John doesn't seem to know what to make of that information.

"But the house doesn't have a cellar," he says.

"I mean, we thought it didn't, but I'm pretty sure...." Alex gestures for John to follow him and leads him over to the closet. It's still open, with all the coats pushed to one side. This time, instead of entering it, Alex kneels just outside of it and feels around the floor. He knocks on it, demonstrating the hollow echo to John, who just raises his eyebrows and kneels next to Alex.

Alex has to run his fingers nearly all the way around the edges of the floor before he finds it--there's a seam in the floor, a marked difference between the majority of the closet's floorboards and those around the very edges. It takes a little wiggling for Alex to get his fingers wedged into it, but the floor lifts away easily. The panel is awkward and bulky, but he manages to get it up and pull it out into the hallway, dropping it to the floor behind where he and John are kneeling.

Beneath the false floor is a stairwell that goes down into the dark. A dusty, stale smell wafts upwards, as if the air below hasn't moved around in a long time. There's no light, as far as he can see.

"Holy shit," he says softly. A cellar might be just what they're looking for--after days of searching every inch of the top three floors of the house and finding nothing, the key to figuring out what's happening here might be on the floor they hadn't realized exists. "We've gotta go down there!" he says, but when he turns to John, he's pale and distant.

"No," he says.

Alex blinks. "What?"

John shakes himself and shivers and--right. They're soaking wet, they're freezing, and there's a shit ton of water that needs to be mopped up off the floor. They can't just leave everything to run off downstairs without even bothering to tell Washington and Deane what's going on.

As if on cue, the van pulls back up outside. The headlights bounce off the interior walls and John pushes himself to his feet, shivering.

"We've gotta start mopping up in there," he says faintly. He picks up the false bottom of the closet and slips it back into place before Alex can protest. "Let's not accidentally send Washington falling to his death. There's no mop in here, but there are towels in the upstairs linen closet."

"Right," Alex says. He gets to his feet as well and follows John up the stairs. John can't seem to stop shivering and it takes him two tries to open the linen closet door. Alex stops him, wrapping his arms around John from behind. It's not much help--Alex is just as wet--but something about John seems to relax a little anyway.

Downstairs, the front door opens.

"Hamilton? Laurens?" he calls up the stairs. "We're back! Have you--goddammit! What happened?"

"A pipe burst, or something," Alex calls back. He lets go of John and grabs as many towels as he can carry. "We're on our way down."

First they need to talk to Washington, then they need to deal with the water, then they need to attempt to stop themselves from getting hypothermia. The cellar can wait.

For the moment.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> On Friday: the thrilling conclusion!
> 
> Thanks for hanging in there, buddies ♥ I'll get to answering comments soon, I know I'm over a week behind now. I APPRECIATE ALL YOUR COMMENTS, I've just been hella busy.


	3. Part Three

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WOW GOSH I'M SO SORRY, GUYS. I feel so crappy for blowing this last deadline, but last week's ear ache persisted for a few days and it basically eliminated my writing time for three days solid. I'm slightly comforted by the fact that this was the only one of seventeen deadlines that I missed, but I still feel bad :(
> 
> ANYWAY, here's the thrilling conclusion of this spooky Halloween story. Sorry it took an extra three days! The lesson I have taken from this is "Kaitlyn, you idiot, you KNOW you can't post multi-chaptered stories unless you've written a first full draft in advance!" which is a lesson I should have learned a long time ago.
> 
> Also? Uh, happy anniversary? It was one year ago today that I first started working on this verse!

It takes much longer to clean up the water than Alex thought it would, even with all four of them working together. They can only find one mop and end up wrapping towels around old brooms to assist in sweeping the water out the back door. Then, of course, they start to run out of dry towels to wipe up the remaining puddles, which almost becomes even more unfortunate--Washington reminds them to save some towels for after their shower at the last possible second. When they finally finish, John's teeth are chattering and Alex's fingers are numb.

"Get yourselves cleaned up," Washington says. Alex and John are huddled together in the kitchen doorway, sharing what meager body heat they have left. "Take a shower, change your clothes, and we'll discuss the afternoon's findings over dinner once you're finished."

They get up the stairs in stops and starts. John turns on the shower as hot as he can stand it and they strip in the tiny bathroom. The water pressure is shitty and Alex is vaguely afraid the showerhead is going to fall off the wall and onto their heads, but it still feels heavenly.

"Stop hogging the water, asshole," John manages to say despite his chattering teeth. He shoves Alex out of the way, not that there's much room, and they shift and push and throw elbows trying to share the limited space.

"We'd probably get warmer if we took our own showers," Alex says.

John raises a single eyebrow at him. "Do _you_ want to be the one to wait for the second shower?"

It's a good point.

Eventually, the feeling comes back into Alex's extremities and he's almost able to enjoy the last five or six minutes of being huddled up against John's naked body. He's still tired as shit and ready to crawl under the covers for the night, but he loves John's body and being so close to it, safe and warm and slick, brings a sort of comfort. A familiarity, maybe. Nothing bad can happen if he has John with him, right?

Right?

They towel off reluctantly--even with their space heater blasting in the bedroom, Alex knows it'll be freezing over there. They both sprint across the hallway and waste little time in getting dressed in as much as they can as quickly as they can. Alex layers on a henley and a t-shirt and a hoodie, rubbing his fingers together to retain at least a little warmth. John, similarly, is buttoning a flannel shirt over his t-shirt and then zipping a hoodie over that. Fuck, but Alex will be happy when they're back in their seventy degree apartment after this weekend is over.

Downstairs, Washington and Deane are in the sitting room with cartons of Chinese food and a six-pack. They watch Alex and John expectantly as they sit down and start piling food on their plates.

"If you have a beer you're going to pass the fuck out before you finish eating," John murmurs when Alex reaches for a drink.

"And you'll graciously keep that from happening?" Alex asks.

"No, I'll laugh at you and maybe help you pick fried rice out of your hair before we go to sleep."

Alex flips him off and pointedly picks up the bottle opener and prys off the cap on a bottle of beer. He turns back to Washington and Deane and says, "So, did you find out anything interesting?"

"Nothing particularly helpful," Washington says. "The house has been in the same family for generations, going back to its construction shortly after the revolution. Despite this, it's only been rarely inhabited--usually, a new generation inherits it, puts money into renovating it, lives here briefly, and then moves out. There's never an inciting incident--there's no record of a haunting that's been documented or even rumored. People give it a wide berth and the usual stories circulate, but nothing with anything close to a basis in reality. Mostly people just say they feel strange on the property, but half the strange feelings people seem to get around houses like this are psychosomatic and based on rumors anyway."

"We read some of the correspondence and any documents we could find mentioning the house, but there's nothing," Deane says. "It's a very peculiar case. The woman at the historical society said that there's some more personal correspondence that she can pull out for us tomorrow, but I fear it will just be more of the same. I was hoping for at least a suggestion of how to proceed."

Alex takes a drink from his beer to avoid saying, _Well, obviously_ out loud.

"What about you?" Washington asks.

"More of the same shit," John mutters. "We did the close examination of the house and found nothing. We were in here and heard a bang. When we ran into the kitchen, we saw the burst pipe. We turned off the water to that faucet, but...well, you saw the damage that was already done. But it was just like before--could have been an old faucet, could have been a spirit, could have been some deranged lunatic secretly living on the property and trying to gaslight us."

Washington isn't thrilled by this revelation. Alex doesn't blame him--he's just as pissed that they're still chasing shadows.

"And I found a cellar," Alex says. Beside him, John goes still, but doesn't say anything.

"A cellar?" Washington asks.

"There's no cellar in the plans I have," Deane says.

Alex shrugs. "Well, I guess your plans are wrong. I don't know what to tell you. The closet outside the kitchen is actually a stairwell down to the cellar. I didn't go down--we had slightly more pressing matters to deal with."

Deane and Washington exchange a look. Alex glances over at John to say something, but John is pushing his food around his plate, staring absently at the table. Alex nudges his foot and he looks up and offers Alex a tired smile.

"Something else to examine tomorrow morning, then," Washington says. "For tonight, I suggest we go over our data, check what's recorded over the course of the day, and then maybe turn in early--we're going to solve this tomorrow. Whatever it takes."

"Sure," Alex says, and pretends he believe him. The sentiment is reflected in the others as well, if their sudden close inspection of their dinner is anything to go by.

Washington sighs and they all drift into an uncomfortable silence.

* * *

There's nothing of note on any of their monitors. Because of course there isn't. No video evidence, no infrared, no audio, no EMF, no temperature, no _anything_.

This whole case is a fucking nightmare.

Maybe that's why Alex wants to sleep so much--even when he _does_ have nightmares, he can never remember them. A vaguely uneasy feeling about something he can't remember is twenty times better than this sisyphean struggle they've been living for the past two days.

"At what point do we give up?" John asks as they get ready for bed. 

"Give up?" Alex asks.

"Go home," John says. "Pack it in--"

"No," Alex says. "I understand what the phrase 'give up,' means, I'm just fucking shocked that the king of 'what if we just sleep on the floor in the murder bathroom and see if anything happens?' wants to leave without an answer."

John looks away and tugs the blankets of their tiny bed down far enough for him to slip under them.

"Maybe some questions are better without answers," he says. Alex does not have the fucking energy to deal with that cryptic bullshit, and he's about to say as much when Washington appears in their doorway. His expression is unreadable.

"What's up?" Alex asks.

Washington glances around the room and then out into the hallway. He looks back at Alex, frowning. "You can't hear it, then?"

Alex shakes his head slowly. 

"Hear what?" John asks.

Washington sighs. "This data would be more useful if I had any idea what it meant," he mutters, mostly to himself.

"What does it sound like?" Alex asks. "You said tapping and thumping before?"

"The thumping is more hollow sounding," Washington says. "The tapping is...it's similar to fingernails tapping on a wooden table. Steady. Like a metronome."

He seems remarkably calm. Alex doesn't know that he could be as calm if he was hearing things no one else could hear.

There's a thump from the hall, and Alex whirls around towards the door.

"Wait," he says.

"That one I heard," John says.

Washington looks relieved, but it only lasts a split second. A moment later, the thump sounds again, followed immediately by a crash and Deane yelping out loud. Washington, Alex, and John scramble in the direction of the noise, stopping outside of Deane's room. Deane is standing near the door, pale and wide-eyed. He's staring at his bed. Or, well, he's probably staring at the large wooden cabinet that's somehow detached itself from the wall and landed on his bed.

Huh.

"I was brushing my teeth," Deane says. "I came back in here and--I could have been lying right there."

"Are you okay?" Washington asks. Deane nods without looking away. "Did you see--"

"I didn't see anything," Deane says. "I wasn't looking, my back was turned and-- _shit_."

The cabinet probably wouldn't have killed Deane, given where it hit the bed, but, fuck, it would have hurt. And a cabinet falling on someone's bed seems a little more sinister than a random smashed window or broken kitchen faucet.

Washington must think so too, because he says, "I think it's for the best if we all sleep in one room tonight. This is getting progressively more pointed, and if whatever is here is going to keep coming after us, there's a certain amount of safety in sticking together."

Deane is strangely uncomfortable with that, but Alex can't blame him--he's not jumping for joy at the idea of this sleepover either.

"I'll drag our mattress into Washington's room," John says.

"I'll help." John snorts, but refrains from his usual comment about Alex's utter inability to do manual labor with any sort of efficiency. Alex has explained at least a dozen times that it's not that he _can't_ perform mindless, strength-based, manual tasks, it's just that he greatly prefers sitting back and watching John do them. Also, he's lazy.

They manage to get the mattress into Washington's room and onto the floor in the corner without too much trouble, even if John does most of the work. Deane is already there, sitting in a nest of cushions and pillows, dressed for bed. The discomfort is still hanging around the slant of his mouth and the furrow between his eyes. Alex and John take one more trip to their room, fetching their belongings, their blankets, and the tiny portable heater that was supposedly warming it

"Maybe with three heaters and four people's body heat, we won't need eighty blankets tonight," Alex says.

"You need eighty blankets every night," John reminds him.

"Eighty blankets or my personal bed warmer." He wraps his arms around John, who rolls his eyes, but doesn't argue any further.

"Let's try and get some sleep," Washington says. Washington is also dressed for bed, which is only a little weird. When they're over the Washingtons' place on weekends, he's always in jeans and a sweater or a sweatshirt, but once or twice they've swung by to drop Laf off or pick him up and spied just-woken-up Washington in his lounge pants and robe. Tonight he's got on a hoodie with the Mets logo on it, a factoid that is only taking up valuable real estate in Alex's brain because John is a diehard fan and Alex is a pretty good boyfriend.

"Normally, this is where I apologize for Alex's inability to shut up when other people are supposed to be sleeping," John says. He crouches down and shuffles onto the mattress, leaving space for Alex to crawl in beside him. 

"Why am I not surprised?" Washington says. "Silas, are you sure I can't convince you to take the bed, or at least share?"

"I'm fine, George," Deane says, though he still has that overall pinched look about him.

Alex situates himself in front of John and pulls the blankets over the both of them. John is warm against his back, save for the spot the tip of his nose is pressed to the back of Alex's neck. His arms are wrapped around Alex's waist, and if Alex wasn't about to drift off before, now it's a certainty. He turns his head to kiss John goodnight, which feels a little weird with Washington and Deane right there, but not as weird as it would feel to go to bed without it after doing it every night since the first week they met. John's knee nudges the back of Alex's, and they shift around until their legs are tangled together and he can feel John's chest expand and contract with each breath.

It's not very hard to fall asleep in those conditions, especially with the way Alex has been feeling. He knows he should be concerned about that--normally danger makes him more alert, not more sluggish--but he's honestly too tired to think about it closely. His head will be clearer if he sleeps, right? And that will make it easier to figure out what's making him so tired. It all makes sense, really.

And that faulty logic is what lulls him to sleep.

* * *

Alex isn't sure what really wakes him up--it could be John, awake and breathing hard next to him, doubled over like he just ran a mile. It could be Washington fumbling for his flashlight and knocking over half the things on his night stand. 

It could also be the thing that, presumably, woke the rest of them--the loud, repeated slamming sound from downstairs.

"John?" Alex mumbles as he follows Washington's lead and stumbles to his feet. His eyes are still blurred from sleep and he's not entirely sure what's happening, but he can see the terror in John's eyes and he knows that he doesn't like it, not at all. John grabs his hand and uses it to lever himself up, squeezing painfully tight, hard enough that Alex swears he can feel his bones grinding together. 

"There's something--" John cuts himself off and breathes deeply.

"You can all hear that?" Washington asks. He gestures manically towards the hall--it's the most unsettled Alex has ever seen their mentor. He and John nod.

"There must be--" Deane starts to say, kicking blankets away, but Alex doesn't know how he intended to end the sentence. He just stops speaking, staring at the open bedroom door with the rest of them.

Washington acts first, heading out to the hall and breaking the strange blanket of inactivity that has smothered the room. Alex follows after, pulling John with him. John, who still has a death grip on Alex's hand and still hasn't finished his earlier sentence.

At the top of the stairs, once they can see the foyer, the origin of the sound becomes clear--the front door is unlatched and slamming open and shut in the strong wind blowing from outside. There's some sort of air current inside, too, pushing the door out every time the howling outside wind pushes it in. Washington disappears at the bottom of the stairs and a moment later, the slamming stops. He returns to the foyer, shaking his head.

"The kitchen door was open too," he says. "It created some sort of wind tunnel." He approaches the front door and pulls it open again, examining it. Alex, John, and Deane join him. There doesn't seem to be anything abnormal about the door, save for some splintering around the edge, likely the result of repeated slamming. There's no resistance when Washington pulls it open or pushes it shut, which he does with a sigh of finality. He locks the door, securing the deadbolt and then turns to face them. "I'm sure I locked it earlier."

"I'm sure you did too," Deane murmurs.

Alexander scrubs at his face with his hands. He's fucking exhausted, he's fucking confused, and he's fucking _pissed off_. Two days! They've been at this stupid house for two days! They've run every test it's possible to run! Sure, sometimes investigations take longer--days or weeks. Sometimes a spirit doesn't want to show itself and investigators need to sit through days of inactivity before they're able to get evidence. Sometimes, even if a spirit is active, it takes a long time to figure out how, exactly, to expel it. Sometimes--rarely--investigators just give up because the spirits inhabiting a place have made it clear they're not going, no matter what anyone does to stop them. He doesn't know that he's ever encountered something like this--a clear haunting, very obvious signs that something paranormal is happening, but with no scientific evidence to back it up. It doesn't make any _sense_! If a spirit is here, its existence has to be disturbing the environment _somehow_. How is it that these things keep happening even with no evidence of an entity?

"Take a breath, son," Washington says quietly, and Alex lets out a jagged laugh.

"I have a fucking headache," he mutters.

"You too?" John asks. 

Alex's eyes fly open and he drops his hands, staring at John. "Are you okay?"

"I was joking," John says. He wasn't; Alex can tell. "Baby, you're exhausted. Let's just fucking go back to bed."

"Does your head hurt?" Alex demands.

"Alex...."

"Do you need an ibuprofen or a cup of tea--did you eat?"

John rolls his eyes. "You're not my fucking mother, Hamilton, step off."

"You're no use to the investigation if you're sick--"

"I'm not _sick_ , jesus _christ_!"

"You've been fucked up this whole weekend--"

" _You've_ been fucked up this whole weekend, you've fallen asleep fucking standing up, Alexander, _Washington_ is hearing things, it's not just me!" John's voice is stinging and loud and Alex actually flinches away from him. He looks a little guilty about that, but his expression is still fiery and sharp.

As it always does where John is concerned, his throat stops up and the words won't come to express what he's feeling, what he's thinking. He flexes his fingers wordlessly, his chest tightening, his hands shaking with some combination of concern and frustration and fucking _exhaustion_.

"Well, your fucking health is at the top of my very short list of priorities," he finally manages to say, and John deflates, just a little. "Just--I fucking need to do something. I need to _do_ something."

John bows his head and presses his palm to his forehead, his face pinched, his jaw clenched. He's pulled taut like a bowstring, ready to snap. Alex holds his breath.

"Fucking--fine. Fine. I'll be upstairs. Do whatever the fuck you need to do."

He doesn't shout, at least. He just turns away and climbs the stairs with perhaps a little more force than necessary. It doesn't make Alex feel any better than he would have felt if John shouted at him.

God, this house is fucking him up.

"Sorry about that," he mutters. He looks at Washington as he says it, but it's directed more at Deane. Washington is used to the two of them by now, and while they've never really fought like this in front of him--if this even counts as a fight--he's seen them treacly and affectionate, which is maybe worse. 

"Don't worry about it, son," Washington says. He clasps Alex's shoulder and squeezes it. "Tensions are running high and we're all tired." The way he looks at Alex when he says it is perhaps a little pointed--okay, okay, he gets it, it's weird that he's so tired.

"Fuck," Alex says softly, mostly to himself. "I don't even know what to do for him."

To his surprise, it's Deane that responds. 

"George, why don't you head up to bed?" he says. "I don't think there's much more we can do tonight. I'll give Mr. Hamilton a hand and we'll join you shortly."

Washington is as surprised as Alex. "If you're sure."

"We won't be long," Deane says.

Washington shrugs and squeezes Alex's shoulder again, then follows John's path up the stairs. Alex watches him go and then turns to Deane warily. His expression is unreadable and he gestures for Alex to follow him to the kitchen. For one hysterical, frazzled moment, Alex is positive that this whole investigation was a ruse for Deane to get them out here and murder them, but logic tells him if that was true, he'd have killed them a dozen times over already.

Instead of murdering him, Deane leads Alex into the kitchen and over to the box that their food and supplies are in. He rustles around inside of it and produces a box of Sleepytime tea and a bottle of water.

"Boil the water in the kettle, I'll hunt down a clean travel mug and the first aid kit," Deane says. Alex has little choice but to do so, moving mechanically around the kitchen, his mind still foggy. Deane returns after only a moment or so and hands Alex a bottle of painkillers and an empty travel mug. "You'll have to wipe it out."

"Sure," Alex says. He does that, too, without thinking about it too much, and then there's nothing left to do with his hands and no further instructions, so he turns around and faces Deane, who's still politely blank. "Sorry about all this shit. I'm sure you think we're unprofessional as hell, but we're not normally like this." Not that he owes Deane any explanations or apologies.

"I don't think you're unprofessional," Deane says. He leans back against the counter, catty-corner from Alex. "Not for being concerned about each other--not for anything, really. You both seem like intelligent, competent young men."

Alex makes a quiet sound of acknowledgement and they sit there in silence as they wait for the kettle to boil.

"How long have you been together?" Deane asks eventually.

Alex isn't big on small talk, but anything is better than silence. "Uh, about five months, I guess? Since August. Which I know seems like...not that long. But." He shrugs. 

"But it also feels like a lifetime?" Deane suggests. Alex chews on his lower lip and nods slowly. Deane doesn't sound patronizing or disdainful at all. In fact, he's smiling a little. "I know the feeling. I met Hetty, my wife, the summer before my first year teaching. We were at a conference and she was a grad student, though I didn't know it at the time. I was entranced by a presentation she gave, but she was one of the few women presenting and she was swarmed by men afterwards, so I never got a chance to talk to her. Imagine my surprise when I arrived on campus that fall and saw her sitting in a department meeting."

Alex shakes his head, a small smile forming against his will. "Fate is weird."

"Very," Deane says. "It wasn't exactly against the rules, to date a student, as long as she wasn't in any of my classes. I was an assistant professor in my first year and she was a fifth year grad student--I was only a year or two older than she was. I was still entranced, but I couldn't seem to connect with her. I didn't know how to talk to people--to anyone, really, but to women especially. My life had always been about proving that I was the smartest person in the room, which, apparently, came off as incredibly condescending to one of the only women in our graduate program."

Alex wants to say, _It still comes off as condescending now, bro,_ , but the "smartest person in the room" thing maybe hit a little too close to home. Jesus, he's lucky he met John before he started working with John.

"We became friends eventually. And I was happy with that--I was happy to spend any time with her--but I knew it was obvious I wanted more. I was already half in love with her. Spring semester, I turned down teaching a graduate level class that I knew she wanted to take. It was...unheard of for assistant professors to be offered that class, but it was an audio-focused field class and I had just published a very influential paper on audio analysis and they wanted to ride on that fame. I think that turning it down is what made it clear to her I was serious, that I liked her because I liked her, not because I thought it would further my own career or because she was a novelty."

"And you finally started dating?" Alex asks.

"About halfway through that spring semester, yes," Deane says. He gets a sweet, faraway look in his eyes. "I was ecstatically happy. We were married at the end of the next academic year, only about fourteen months after we started dating. She was so nervous--she wanted it, but she was afraid I'd regret moving so fast, that in a year or two I'd have second thoughts. I have no idea why she would think that--I was crazy about her. Everyone who met us for more than a moment could see it."

"Yeah, I know that feeling." Alex has to look away--he knows he's blushing. He rubs the back of his neck, sweeping his eyes across the floor and over to the other side of the room, finally focusing on picking at a scratch in the countertop. "I haven't ever, um. Been in a relationship like this before. But I can barely remember my life before I met John, sometimes. It's like I met him and the world came into sharper focus. I don't know. That sounds stupid."

"It doesn't," Deane says, with perhaps the most kindness Alex has heard from him all weekend. He looks up at Deane again.

"Did you work with her?" he asks. "Once she got her degree and everything?"

"Sometimes," Deane says. "She was a wonderful investigator--fearless, though that made me nervous, with a brilliant instinct for the work. Phenomenal. She didn't like academic work as much--never pursued teaching, mostly used her PhD for research. And I wasn't as big a fan of field work, honestly. I did enough to keep my certification, but that was all. I'd go out with her on cases, sometimes, to log my hours, but mostly I just watched her work. She was incredible."

Alex hasn't missed the tense shift and there's an unease rolling around his gut. He's been surrounded by grief, by loss, his entire life, but he doesn't know how to ask. Normally, he's on the other side of this conversation. "Is she...?"

Deane nods. "Two years ago." He runs a hand through his thick, grey hair. "Ovarian cancer. I wish I could say I was coping, but." He shrugs. "She handled it better than I did, in the end. She would get mad at me--I coddled her. She thought it was condescension, but I honestly didn't know how else to handle it. I felt helpless. I needed to--" He glances at Alex and smiles ruefully, and then Alex hears his own words parroted back at him. "I needed to _do_ something. But I wasn't that kind of doctor."

"I'm sorry," Alex says. He doesn't have to imagine that scenario--it's the substance of his darkest thoughts. He may not be able to remember most of his nightmares, but there's been more than one night that he's passed by watching John sleep and realizing, in deafening repetition, that everything he touches falls to pieces and he doesn't know if he could pick himself up if the same thing was to happen to John.

"It's been difficult," Deane admits. "I've been thinking about her a lot more the past two days, watching you two work. Remembering when I had someone who could read me that way. And earlier--I've had that argument too many times to count. While she was sick and before sometimes, too. She used to get headaches."

Alex's attention snaps to Deane. "Headaches," he repeats slowly.

"On investigations, from time to time," Deane confirms. He gestures towards the kettle and the painkillers. "This is what I would do for her, then. Excedrin is actually better for the headaches, but caffeine before bed--it's hard enough sleeping here."

"She would get headaches on cases," Alex says. Because this isn't the first time this has happened. And yes--they're all being affected by the energy in this house, he's not blind to that, but there have been a handful of other times since they started working together that John has grappled with a headache while they were working. "Um. John--this isn't the first--do you know why?"

Deane crosses his arms loosely and shakes his head. "We never did figure it out. It was never debilitating, never too painful, just persistent when she did get them. They might have been stress or anxiety. They didn't happen every time and it wasn't as if--I know some mediums get headaches, but she could never see or communicate with spirits and what she experienced wasn't the same as what those mediums describe. It never hurt her, so eventually we gave up trying to explain it."

Deane's been kind and he's shared so much that Alex doesn't hesitate. "This isn't the first time John has gotten a headache on a case. The first few times we went out together they bothered him and maybe three or four times since. I just--I worry."

Between them, the kettle starts to hum. Deane glances at it, then leans over and squeezes Alex's shoulder. "I wouldn't worry about it. In thirty years, for all my fretting, it was never anything more than an annoyance to Hetty."

"Yeah," Alex says. He's surprised that he actually feels a little better. The kettle goes from humming to whistling and he moves to turn it off and remove it from the burner. "Uh. Thanks."

"You're welcome," Deane says. He opens his mouth as if he wants to add something, but he just freezes in place instead. Alex watches him out of the corner of his eye while he adds a teabag to the mug and fills it with water. "I'm sorry if I've been rude to you. Either of you. It's not an excuse, but Hetty was always the one who kept my ego in check, and I fear that something about this place keeps bringing out the worst in me."

Alex concentrates on screwing the lid onto the mug as he contemplates his reply. He remembers what he said to John about Deane earlier-- _Maybe he was just having a bad year_. It sounds like he was. The shittiest possible year, even. Maybe he should have given the guy the benefit of the doubt. "It's okay," he says. "I'm sure we've been just as bad." They haven't--he knows that--but the dude just told Alex all about his dead wife and he's not above making this tiny concession.

He makes sure the lid is secured to the mug and then picks up the painkillers. He really just wants to see John right now. He follows Deane out of the kitchen, but pauses again at the foot of the stairs. 

"Hey, just--the headaches and the cancer--they weren't like...related?"

Deane shakes his head firmly. "Not at all, as far as we could tell. The headaches happened long before and continued after. And the ovarian cancer--it ran in her family, unfortunately."

"Plus, I guess, John doesn't have ovaries," Alex says, a flat, awkward attempt to hide his slump of relief.

"I wouldn't have wanted to assume, but yes," Deane says. "Why don't you go get him that tea?"

"Right," Alex says. "Right. Thanks again."

Deane gestures for Alex to head up the stairs first. He takes them two at a time, but carefully, so as not to spill John's tea. When he gets to the bedroom, Washington is sitting up in bed and John is sitting on their mattress, back against the wall, legs spread out in front of him, blankets in his lap. Alex hands him the travel mug of tea and the bottle of ibuprofen.

"Thanks," John says quietly. Once he has a grip on the items, Alex drops down onto the mattress next to him and curls up as closely as he can manage.

"I'm sorry," he says. "I don't want to fight. Especially not about something so stupid."

"I don't want to fight either," John says. He rests his cheek on the top of Alex's head. "I'm not mad at you."

"I know," Alex says. "And I'm not mad, I'm just...I don't know. I want a solution to this. I need a solution. I'm losing my mind."

"I know," John says. He kisses the crown of Alex's head. "If we don't figure it out tomorrow, we'll go into town together at least, okay? A couple hours away might help."

"Yeah," Alex says, though he's not so sure. He yawns and shifts around a little, lets John gently guide him until he's lying on the mattress with his head pillowed on John's thighs. "Hey, I love you, okay?"

"I know that, dummy." John leans down and kisses him, then pets his hair. It's soothing enough that Alex closes his eyes. "I love you too."

"Drink your tea." 

Alex doesn't have to look up to know that John is rolling his eyes spectacularly, but a moment later he hears the distinctive pop of the top being snapped off of the pill bottle and smiles to himself. It may not be much, but doing even this little thing makes him feel better enough that he can maybe sleep again.

* * *

The air is different on Sunday morning. Alex wonders, at first, if he's not imagining it--it's time to admit that his energy really has been completely drained away, and it's hard for him to concentrate. It would be easy for him to mistake everyone else's quiet for tension as he struggles to keep his eyes open over coffee, but he doesn't think it's a mistake. He has a hand resting between John's shoulders, the muscles there stiff and tight under his fingers. Washington is staring at the wall, his expression hard and guarded. Deane is staring into his coffee, his brow furrowed. He never imagined he could feel this broken and desperate over a stupid case.

"Here's the plan," Washington says, finally. He doesn't look away from the wall. "Silas and I are going to investigate the dead animals you boys saw yesterday. While we're doing that, the two of you collect any data you think might be relevant. When we get back, we'll decamp to the reading room at the historical society. What Laurens said last night has some merit--it's likely that whatever is here is affecting our emotional and mental states. Spending a few hours somewhere else might clear up some of these mysteries. At the very least, we should be able to clear our minds and concentrate without the house's energy around us."

"Great," John murmurs. "Can we go somewhere we can get a drink?"

Deane snorts and Washington flashes them something that's almost a smile. "We'll get lunch, yes."

Alex rubs his thumb between John's shoulders and holds in a yawn. He needs to get the fuck out of this house so maybe he can _think_.

"Well," Washington says. He pushes his chair away from the table. "The faster we get started, the faster we're out of here."

He and Deane get to their feet. Alex hears them walk out of the kitchen, talking quietly amongst themselves. He knows he should get up and start packing up the things they'll need in town, but that seems like so much work....

The front door opens and closes and John sighs and sits up. Alex's hand slides down his back.

"We should get moving," John says, and Alex stands and stretches. The pull of his muscles does a little to clear the fog in his mind, makes it a little easier to focus. John stands, too--he looks as tired as Alex feels, his hair flat, his face pale. Alex reaches out and frames John's face with his hands. John wraps his arms around Alex's waist and they just stand there for a moment.

"I'm so fucking pissed off," Alex says. He rests his forehead against John's. "Why the fuck can't we figure this out?"

"I don't know," John says. "But let's get the fuck out of here, alright?"

"Yeah. Yeah."

John takes his hand as they abandon the kitchen. Even if Washington and Deane take a while out in the woods, he and John can be waiting for them in the van. They just need to gather their evidence and get the hell out.

He pauses as they leave the kitchen, though, John inadvertently tugging on his hand as he keeps going. The closet door is cracked open, and he remembers the hidden cellar. It probably won't make much of a difference, but better for them to have data on the whole house, right?

"We should take some photos of the cellar before we go," he says to John. 

John stops short. His hand squeezes Alex's tightly and he stands too still. "Why?"

"If we're gonna be looking over everything, we might as well have everything to look over, right?" John doesn't say anything. "We can take some pictures from the base of the stairs. I know you hate my pictures, but if you do regular and I do thermal, it'll only take a few minutes. We'll still be packed up before Washington and Deane get back."

"What's up with you and Deane?" John asks. He turns slowly; when he's facing Alex again, there's a strange, forced smile on his face. 

"You're changing the subject," Alex says.

"No, I'm just curious," John says. 

"I'll tell you later," Alex says. "While we're waiting. Let's take the pictures."

John's hand is still squeezing his. He looks...he looks terrified.

"John?" Alex asks. John rolls his shoulders and looks away. "Is something wrong?"

"No. Nothing's--I just think we shouldn't do anything else here without backup."

"I'm not talking a full investigation or anything, that would be stupid. We'll just take pictures--it'll take two seconds," Alex says. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine."

He's not fine. "Baby...."

"I'm fine," John says again. He looks back at Alex. "I'm fine, it's fine, let's fucking do this if we're gonna do it, I wanna get the fuck out of here."

John drops his hand and marches back towards the sitting room. Alex has to rush to catch up.

"Nevermind, we don't have to do anything," Alex calls after him. If taking pictures is going to upset John this much, it's better to just skip them altogether. This stupid house is doing strange things to all their moods and the last thing he wants is to get into another fucking fight before they leave. "We'll just go, if you're that upset about it."

"I'm not upset," John lies. When Alex gets to the sitting room, John is already clutching his camera. His knuckles are white. "Let's just fucking do it so we can leave already."

Alex should argue--tell John to forget it, walk over and unclench his fingers and try to soothe him--but at this point, taking the damn pictures will be easier. He grabs the thermal camera and leads the way back to the hallway. He pushes the closet door open the rest of the way and rests the camera on the floor, then runs his fingers across the bottom of the closet looking for the seam. Then it's just a matter of slipping his fingers between the boards and hefting it up. 

He gets back to his feet and hangs the thermal camera around his neck, staring down into the darkness. Who knows how long it's been since someone was down there?

"Hold my hand for a second," he says to John.

"If I must." There's just a shade of John's usual good humor there and he takes Alex's hand readily, interlocking their fingers and squeezing it.

Alex steps gingerly onto the first step, resting more and more weight atop it until he holds his breath and leans entirely forward, clinging to John's hand. The stair creaks, but doesn't even really sag under his weight. Good. "Seems okay," he says.

"Alright," John says, but he doesn't let go of Alex's hand.

Alex slips his other hand into the pocket of his hoodie. There's a baggie of chalk dust, a few balled up receipts, a tube of salt, half a granola bar, a lighter, a couple pens, and finally he closes his fingers around the tiny flashlight he brings with him everywhere. He clicks it on and shines it down into the cellar. He can see the stairs leading downward: each of them appears to be solid and intact. They lead to a landing, at which point they change direction and continue down. He can't see around the corner, but they can at least go that far and reassess.

John is still clinging to his hand as they begin to descend the stairs.

This is unlike John--this whole weekend is unlike all of them, really, but John's usually the first idiot running into trouble. John's recklessness puts Alex's own to shame. John's not normally timid and he's never _scared_. He's scared now. He's shaking and his hand is sweating where it's clinging to Alex's hard enough to hurt. He'll be mortified when they get home, just as Alex is sure he'll be embarrassed about this constant lethargy. He'll probably have to endure jokes from John for _weeks_.

They hit the landing and John breathes in sharply. His nails bite into Alex's hand. Alex swings the light around and looks down the next flight of steps, but it's more of the same. The stairs lead to the floor, but there are walls on either side. He can see about ten feet past the foot of the stairs, out onto a stone floor, but that's all. It looks clear so far--they'll probably be able to stand right there and take their photos, then head straight back up the stairs.

"Alex, I don't--" John starts to say, and then stops talking. He swallows audibly. 

"What's up?" Alex asks. Two steps down. Three, four, five.

"This is--let's go, let's go now, I don't--"

Six, seven, eight. "We're here, we might as well--"

" _Alex_!"

Alex turns to look at John as he steps onto the cellar floor. He's white as a sheet, his eyes huge, sweat beading at his temple. "John--" he starts to say, but he stops abruptly when it gets dark. He looks away, back down at his flashlight, but he can't see it. He should be able to see it--even if the bulb burnt out, there should be enough light filtering in from upstairs to _see_ it. It shouldn't be this black. It shouldn't be cold like this, either, stinging, biting cold, sharp as it was when they were out in the woods, buffeted by the wind. 

John falls against his back, still clutching his hand, still shaking. "This isn't right," he says, and he shivers. Or maybe Alex shivers. Fuck, why is it so cold, why is it so dark, why can't he _think_?

He tries to turn around, to head back up the stairs. They can get another flashlight, maybe bring down the floodlights from the sitting room. But he can't find the stairs--he didn't go far, they should be right behind them, but he's slipped the flashlight's strap around his wrist and has his hand stretched out as far as he can reach and he can't find the doorway. He can't find a wall at all, he can't find anything except this cold wind and the darkness and John pressed up against him. 

It's getting hard to breathe.

"Fuck," he says. He pulls John closer--John is the only solid thing he has right now and he's not letting go, not for a moment. "What the fuck--what's--"

"There's something here, there's something here," John whispers frantically. "This is--there's something--"

Alex is shaking now too, shivering and pushing back his panic at the _darkness_. It's like nothing he's ever known, it's all encompassing. There's not the hint of an outline of anything--his eyes are trying frantically to adjust, but every second that passes is just met with more blankness, with more _dark_. He has to keep his breathing even and not give in to the urge to breathe harder, faster. He can't _panic_. He reaches out again, grasping for anything.

Something brushes up against his hand. It's like ice.

" _Shit_!"

He steps back, closer to John and focuses on _not panicking_ , he can't _panic_ , panic is what _gets people killed_. If he keeps a level head they can get out of here, if he _focuses_ , but he can't _focus_ , he hasn't been able to for _days_ and it's dark and it's cold and he can't die down here but how the fuck are they going to get out?

"I don't have anything!" he hisses. He can smell John's shampoo, he can feel the warmth of his body heat, but he can't _see_ him, even though they're pressed together. "I didn't--fuck, why didn't I bring anything, why did I think this was a good idea, why didn't I listen to you?"

Both of John's hands have been clinging to him--holding onto him hard enough to bruise, hard enough that his fingernails are drawing blood. One hand pulls away and Alex has to swallow a scream. No, no, no, he won't let that happen, John doesn't deserve this, he won't let this thing take John away from him--

"I'm here, I'm here, I'm just--" John babbles. "I'm just--I have...I have some sage, I have some...some salt. I don't have matches, I don't have--"

"I have a lighter!" Alex says quickly. "I have a lighter, I have chalk--uh, salt! I have salt! But I don't have--I don't know what--" God, he can't _think_. They don't know anything about what's attacking them, they don't have all the necessary equipment or ingredients to do an exorcism, they don't even know what incantations to use. Fuck, Alex can't even remember any incantations, he can't remember _anything_. "I don't know what to do!"

His voice breaks in the middle of it. He'd be humiliated if he wasn't so terrified.

"Okay," John says. His voice is hoarse and shaky, but there's a certain amount of resolve to it. "Okay, okay...." The room gets colder, if that's possible. Alex thinks he'd be able to see his breath if he could see anything. It feels tighter, too, like the walls are closing in. He wants to reach out and make sure they're not, feel what's around them, but the memory of that...that _thing_ touching his hand....

"I can't think, I can't think," Alex repeats over and over again, his voice soft, shaking. "I can't--" His breath starts to come faster.

"I know, I know, I know, Alexander, breathe, breathe, I know," John says. His lips are pressed against the back of Alex's head, behind his ear. They're warm where the rest of the room is frigid and Alex tries to cling to that. "We do what we can until Washington comes back. We do what we can and then Washington and...and Deane will be back...we just have to hold on. H-here." John fumbles beside him and then he reaches across Alex and presses something into his opposite hand. It's the sage--he hands Alex the sage. "Light it, do a cleanse."

"But it's already--how will a cleanse--"

"Just do it!" John shouts desperately. "I don't know, I can't--it's what we have, it's--just fucking--"

Alex squeezes his hand around the sage, but the lighter is still in his pocket. "How can I--" He squeezes John's hand.

"I'll--" John lets go of his hand, but before he can release the scream of protest that's bubbling up in his throat, John's behind him, pressed against his back, arms around his waist. One of his hands slips up under Alex's hoodie and presses against his bare hip. "I'm here, I'm right here, just--"

Alex pulls out the lighter. His hands are shaking and he flicks it a few times, but he still can't see anything, everything is still black--not even a spark shining through the blackness. Fuck, fuck, _fuck_!

But he remembers, suddenly, what Washington had said the night before--two nights before, shit, it feels like a lifetime. He closes his eyes and focuses on the sound of the lighter, the feel of it. He flicks it again and again and the third time he can tell it's lit, even if he can't see it. He moves it towards the sage until he can smell the herb burning, then he depresses the button and shoves it back into his pocket. He fumbles for John's hand again and starts reciting a cleanse.

"Good, good, good," John whispers from beside him. He's tripping over the words and it's not doing anything, nothing is happening--

"Nothing is happening!" he says, and John squeezes his hand.

"Keep going--"

"It's not doing anything!"

" _It's all we have_!" He's never heard John take that tone before. Something in it shakes him to his bones and he stops arguing. He closes his eyes and digs his nails into John's palm. "It's all we have, you can do it, _you have to do it_!" John's grip on him tightens and Alex reaches for that spark of conviction, the smallest speck of hope and knowledge and chutzpah that's buried deep down inside, the confidence that he can do this. He can't find it, he can't find anything--

John gasps, sharp, short, and then, suddenly, it's there. 

With his eyes still squeezed shut, Alex lets himself fall into that certainty, that _faith_ that they can do this. He says the words, he _shouts_ the words and he holds out the sage. He feels something running through him--some kind of electricity, some kind of _power_ , something urging him onwards. It's all right there, bright and warm, and that belief billows through him and carries him through one recitation and then another and another. And suddenly it's not as cold. Suddenly, there's the faintest impression of light behind his eyelids. He feels like his hair is standing on end, static is zipping up and down his spine--he's more awake, more alert than he's been in days, he has all the power he needs to shout the incantation one last time.

There's a crackle in the air--he can feel it all around him, feel the tension heighten and then, just as quickly, vanish all together.

The energy drains out of him. He drops the sage, his fingers shaking, and opens his eyes.

It's just regular darkness, broken by the flashlight still hanging from his wrist and the smoldering sage on the floor at his feet. The cellar is dark and empty. He's not suffocating, he's not freezing, his mind isn't fogged. He feels normal for the first time all weekend.

John is still clinging to his back, breathing hard. 

"John?" he says, and steps away, turns around--

\--and John swoons into his arms, his eyes rolling back into his head.

He's so shocked, he almost drops John onto the stone floor. Dread starts to seep into him again, panic and fear and disbelief, because, no, he can't lose John, _he can't lose John_ \--

"'m fine," John mumbles. He grasps weakly at Alex's chest. "Fine, I'm fine, I'm--" His eyes open and Alex fumbles with the flashlight still around his wrist. With the light on him, John is chalk white, sweating, and shaking. He's blinking his eyes, woozy, and clinging to Alex. 

"Are you okay--fucking--fuck--John, John--"

"Fine," John repeats, and struggles to stand up. "Is it--did we--"

"Yes!" Alex nearly sobs. "Jesus christ, what's wrong with you, are--"

"Tired," John insists. "Just--let's--upstairs?"

Alex doesn't wait for John to change his mind. It's awkward, half-carrying John up the stairs. Their cameras are still hanging between them, and though John may technically be shorter than him, he's bigger and heavier, especially when he doesn't seem capable of moving very quickly on his own. They nearly fall over the threshold, and once they're on the floor of the hallway, Alex abandons his camera and takes John's off as well, pulling John's body up against him and holding on tightly.

"What's wrong, what happened?" he asks. John's head lolls back, but he wraps his arms around Alex's middle.

"Things went...wonky," John mumbles. "Is it gone?"

"It's--I don't know," Alex says. "It's not right here any longer, and that's what--are you okay? Baby, look at me--are you okay?"

John trembles for a moment and then pushes himself up, his hand pressing against Alex's knee for leverage. His eyes are cloudy for a moment when they meet Alex's, but snap back to focus. He looks slightly less pale than he had in the basement. "I'm fine," he says. His voice is mostly steady. "Alexander, I'm fine, I'm just--I'm tired."

'Tired' is an understatement. But John sits for another moment and then unsteadily gets to his feet. He needs to lean against the wall, but he doesn't swoon again and he's not shaking any longer. It takes another minute, but soon enough he's standing upright on his own. He looks up at Alex and opens his arms. Alex embraces him perhaps a little too quickly, too tightly, but he doesn't care.

"Baby, I'm fine, I'm fine," John murmurs into Alex's hair. "I'll be okay. Are _you_ okay?"

"I have no fucking idea," Alex says into the crook of John's neck. "You scared the shit out of me, Laurens."

"Yeah, well, it wasn't a walk in the fucking park for me either." 

They slowly make their way from the hallway to the sitting room and the collapse onto the couch. Alex's heart rate is finally slowing down to normal; John's color is finally coming back. They sit in silence for a moment, just breathing together, side-by-side.

"What happened down there?" Alex finally asks.

"I don't know," John says. He's staring at his hands. "You lit the sage, you recited that cleanse--"

"--and nothing happened until it did," Alex says. "I know that. But just--what was that? It wasn't working. There was _nothing_ , and then all of a sudden, it was like...it was like I was attached to a live wire. Like someone hooked me up to a battery or something."

John remains quiet, picking at his cuticles. "I don't know what to tell you, Alex. I don't know what happened. It was dark and then--" He shrugs. "It's gone. At least for the moment. That's what's important, right?"

"I guess," Alex says. He rubs at his temples. "Jesus, it was weird, though. I know you know it was weird. You...you passed out at the end there."

"I don't know what I did," John says.

"You fainted into my fucking arms," Alex says. "If I hadn't been quick enough to grab you, we'd be on our way to the hospital for someone to stitch your head back together."

John is quiet again. That's maybe the most telling party.

"What aren't you telling me?" Alex whispers, as if there's someone in the room that might overhear them. "What happened to you? What happened to me?"

"It was dark," John mumbles. "I couldn't see anything."

"That doesn't answer my question."

He's frustrated and edgy--the ennui that's been dragging him down for the past few days has been replaced by restless energy. He's itching to jump up and _do_ something, but he doesn't know what. Run far away from here, maybe. John, conversely, looks as tired as Alex has felt since they moved into this house for the weekend.

Distantly, Alex can hear Washington and Deane talking. They must be walking back to the house. Or maybe running--the voices are approaching rather quickly.

"John?" Alex prompts. He grabs John's hand and squeezes it, noticing the angry red half-moon marks all along his hand. Alex has matching marks on his own.

"I don't know," John says. "I don't--we were there and it was dark and I was scared and I--I don't know."

Washington and Deane are closer now. Alex can almost make out their words.

"It was like I was alone in the dark and then I hit this...this energy. I found this spark of faith that I could propel into the incantation," Alex says. 

"I need to think," John says, desperately. "I need to--can we talk about this later? Please, can we just talk about this later?"

"Talk about _what_?" Alex doesn't want to give into his frustration, but this weekend has been full of enough mysteries without his boyfriend suddenly clamming up. "I don't know what happened, I don't know _how_ it happened!"

"Alexander, _please_?" John squeezes his hand so tightly it almost tears open those little half-moon marks all over again. "Just...please do this for me."

Alex falters. Shit. John asks for so fucking little, and Alex is just as confused, just as overwhelmed by what happened. John looks ready to pass out, and hasn't Alex been fighting against that same impulse all weekend?

"Fine," Alex says, though it hurts him to say it. "Fucking...fine. But we're talking about this later!"

John slumps back in relief. " _Thank you_ ," he whispers fiercely, just as the front door bangs open.

"Hamilton, Laurens!" Washington shouts, and then stops short when he sees them on the couch. "Boys?"

"We're here," Alex says. "We're fine. We're--it's a long story."

"We were out in the woods and we felt--I don't know what it was," Deane admits. "Like a cloud lifted. Like something righted itself."

"We were in the basement," Alex says. "Something--we found whatever it was. It's gone now--I don't know if it's gone for good or--but." He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. "Fuck. I don't know what happened."

"You were in the basement?" Washington's voice is sharp, but it's not disapproval that shadows his words, it's something more like concern. Alex shouldn't be surprised, but unpacking that hint of panic and affection seems like too much fucking work tonight. He'll examine it later, when tensions aren't running as high, when he can talk about it with John.

"It was stupid, I know," Alex says. "I thought--we were just going to take pictures. In and out. And then--" He swallows, the memory of the sudden cold overtaking him. The memory of the thing in the dark that touched him....

"It got dark," John says. Alex nearly shudders with relief. He could kiss John--well, he could always kiss John, there are days it's all he wants to do, but this would be a kiss of gratitude too strong for words. "Not just dark--it sucked the light out of the room. It blinded us. It got cold and we were stuck down there--we couldn't find our way out. We didn't have anything, we hadn't brought anything. We thought it would be quick." _Alex_ thought it would be quick and John hadn't wanted to go in the first place. That should have been his first clue--stupid, reckless John who normally doesn't think twice about running into danger...fuck. "I had some stuff in my pockets, some sage. Alex had a lighter."

"It shouldn't have worked," Alex says. He tugs at his hair. "It shouldn't have--it was just a cleanse. It was all I could think of--all John could get me to think of. It shouldn't have worked and it wasn't working and then--" And then something took hold of him and turned everything up to eleven. "--and then it worked. Just like that, it was gone and we were back and--" And John passed out in his arms, sickly white, and Alex had never been so fucking scared in his goddamn life. "--and we came up here and then you guys got back."

They all take a moment to digest that information. Alex slumps against John, who looks down at him and offers him a half smile. He touches the tip of Alex's nose for no earthly reason, but it startles a smile out of Alex and loosens something in his chest. John's alive. He's right here. They're both fine.

"Silas, grab a Mel meter," Washington finally says. "Boys, stay here. If we're not back in five minutes, put yourselves in a salt circle and do a standard eighteenth century northeastern exorcism."

Alex nods. He watches as Washington and Deane load on their gear and then disappear out into the hall and down the stairs. He's nervous while they're gone--of course he's nervous--but he's not _afraid_ for them. Whatever's been hanging so heavy over all of them this weekend--that dread has disappeared. 

Washington and Deane don't even take the full five minutes before they return. Deane is staring at his Mel meter with wide eyes, muttering to himself.

"It shouldn't be possible," he says.

"The numbers don't lie, not like this," Washington says. "Not without the equipment being entirely recalibrated."

"What's going on?" John asks.

Deane looks up from his Mel meter, shaking his head. "The readings downstairs--they're off the charts. There's nothing there, there's no spirit, they're not spiking, they're just a solid forty-five, fifty points higher down there then they are up here, and that's not even taking into account the extra ten points we raised our baseline."

"I have no idea what could be causing it," Washington says. He looks equally miffed, if not quite so obvious about it. "Something in the structure of the house, maybe, and the sediments in the ground around here."

"It's incredible," Silas says. "I've never seen anything like it."

"So," John says slowly, "if there was something in the house and it stayed down there--"

"It shouldn't be possible!" Deane says again.

"It may not have shown up on the equipment up here," Washington confirms. "I don't know how. I don't know--this is incredibly odd."

"But things were happening up here!" Alex says. "All of the--the library window, the picture, the faucet, the doors...." He's getting another headache. This goes against everything they know about spirits and energy.

"We need to study this further," Deane says. "There has to be an explanation."

"But it still doesn't explain--shouldn't that have made it harder to get rid of the thing?" Alex says. "It still doesn't explain how a fucking cleanse with half a bundle of sage covered in pocket lint could have expelled this thing."

"It's all connected, in a way," Deane says. "It's all about energy. You know, I'm sure, the three domains of parapsychic skill."

"Knowledge, instinct, and parapsychic ability," Alex recites automatically.

"Precisely," Deane says. "They're all just different sorts of power, different ways of funnelling your energy towards whatever you're trying to manipulate." Deane's tone is different than it's been all weekend. Before, he'd always sounded almost haughty when he was talking to Alex and John. Now he sounds more like Washington does when he's talking to them--like he has knowledge he's happy to share with anyone interested enough to ask. "Now, any incantation is just a way of directing that energy--with knowledge comes precision, with instinct comes conviction, and the parapsychic ability is a way of interacting with a spirit's energy. An exorcism and a cleanse--on a basic level, they're doing the same thing to different degrees. A cleanse is about flipping the energy in the room, inverting it to discourage spirits. Think of it as closing a door. If you close a door slowly, or even at a regular pace, what you're doing is making your intention clear to anything that's around, nudging it out by its own power and preventing it front getting back in. Someone sees the door coming and steps back and out of the way. If you use all your power to slam a door shut, it can be a more violent process--the very act of moving the door is enough to propel something away by _your_ power."

It's all starting to come together in a sort of hazy way. In theory, he can follow what Deane is saying--a cleanse is a more polite exorcism. But it still doesn't explain so much of what happened.

"But where did the energy come from in the first place?" Alex asks. "I've been the opposite of energetic this weekend. I _was_ the opposite of energetic, but then something gave me like...a boost. Like it plugged me in when my power was low or something."

Deane looks less sure, now. He shrugs awkwardly. "That I don't know," he says. "Maybe it has something to do with the same energy that's so strong in the cellar. I'm afraid I need to do many more tests, and even if I do--unless another strong spirit makes itself home here or unless this one comes back, we may never be able to replicate those circumstances."

They settle into another quiet spell as Alex turns all of that information over in his mind. Why does every question answered leave two new ones in its wake?

"I think what we need to focus on now is getting out of here for the time being," Washington says. "This whole weekend has proven to be much more dangerous than we anticipated. It appears that whatever was here is no longer on the premises. We should return to the lab, examine the data, and decide how to proceed--one or all of us may need to make another trip out here."

"Maybe," John says quietly. Something about the way he says it makes Alex think he's not planning on ever stepping foot in this place again. How very unlike his John.

"I think you boys have had an exciting enough afternoon," Washington says. "Pack your things upstairs--we'll load up the equipment and decamp to Morristown to study this further."

"Good," Alex says.

"Great," John says. "Fuck, I've missed my bed."

"You're not the only one," Washington says. "Let's get moving."

They pack up faster than Alex had imagined was possible. The constant mental checklists and carrying case tetris keep his mind too occupied to linger on the events in the cellar. He's not sure if he's grateful or disappointed--he hates unanswered questions, but it's entirely possible there won't be an answer to this one for a very long time.

And then there's John--suspiciously quiet and sticking close to Alex's side. He still looks exhausted, and though most of his color has come back, he's paler than he normally is. There are dark circles under his eyes that Alex swears weren't there this morning and he keeps rubbing his temples. Finally, Alex pushes the bottle of ibuprofen into his hand and gives him a Look.

"Don't say a fucking word, just take it," he says. 

John sighs. Loudly. Theatrically. But he shakes out some pills and dry swallows them all the same. He spreads his hands in front of him as if to say _Happy?_ Alex just nods with satisfaction and goes back to packing.

He does pause when they're packing the last of their bags back into the van. Washington and Deane are locking up the house and John is staring out at the woods, twisting his hair around his fingers absently.

"Hey," Alex murmurs. John turns to him and grins.

"Hi," John says. Alex holds out his hand and John offers his own without question, slides their fingers together once Alex takes it.

"I was talking to Deane last night--I'll tell you the whole thing when we get home, but one of the things he said--his wife used to get headaches."

"Headaches," John repeats. He raises a single eyebrow and Alex can't help the ghost of a smile that peeks out.

"Yeah," he says. "He said...he said she was a brilliant investigator, but that sometimes when she was out on a case, she'd get these headaches. There was no rhyme or reason to them and they weren't like...debilitating. But they'd linger. She was never able to figure out why she got them or where they came from, but they didn't have any lasting repercussions--they were just, you know, a thing. She was fine."

The smallest amount of tension seems to release from John's shoulders. "She was? Is she--I couldn't, you know...talk to her, could I?"

This is the most Alex has ever seen John acknowledge his headaches. It breaks his heart that he has to put an end to it with his next words. "She's, um. She died." John's eyes go wide. "Not--it didn't have anything to do with the headaches. But, long story short, that's part of why Deane is such an asshole? I don't know. It's sad. It's a sad story. I don't want to tell it here." He wants to tell it somewhere warm and safe where he can end it by feeling sad for Deane, but overall relieved that he's warm and safe and happy and holding on to his warm, safe, happy boyfriend.

"Oh," John says.

"Yeah." 

John sighs and squeezes Alex's hand, then tugs him towards the back of the van. Deane and Washington are on their way over and soon they'll finally, _finally_ be heading home.

"It does make me feel better," he murmurs as they're buckling their seatbelts.

"Hm?"

"That she--I thought--I don't know. I do get them, sometimes. Only at work. It's hard to explain. I don't want to worry you, you know?"

"I know," Alex says. _I can always fucking tell, you asshole_ , he doesn't say.

"Maybe I'm allergic to ghosts," John says with a quick grin that flashes his teeth. It's his dumb, awkward, silly smile, the one he hates and Alex loves.

"Maybe you're allergic to poor decision making."

"Uh, who backs me up on ninety percent of those decisions?" He elbows Alex and Alex elbows him back and by the time Washington gets into the van, they're both smiling.

"You boys ready to head back home?" he asks.

Alex hates leaving questions unanswered, cases unsolved. Sure, whatever was in the house is gone now, but will that stick? What was it? How did it evade their equipment? What the fuck got it to leave in the first place?

But, fuck, right now he'll take his own bed over an answer a hundred times over.

" _Yes_ ," John says emphatically.

"Definitely," Alex agrees.

"Then let's go."

Washington starts the engine and backs up, turning the van around and slowly heading back down to the road. At the end of the twisting driveway, he maneuvers it through the gate, and then they're going back through the suburbs and then back through town and Alex feels better and better the more distance they put between the van and the house.

They make it almost all the way to the highway before John closes his eyes to ward off his car sickness, his head falling to Alex's shoulder. Alex waits another minute or two before he speaks again, quietly.

"You know you can tell me anything, right?"

John doesn't open his eyes, but Alex knows he's still awake.

"I do," he murmurs. "There's nothing to tell." Then he takes a deep breath. "There's nothing to tell yet, at least. If there is something to tell...you'll be the first person who finds out, okay?"

It's not exactly the answer Alex was looking for, but it's good enough for now.

"Okay," he says. "Go to sleep. Don't puke on me."

"You're so romantic," John says.

"Babe, if you think allowing you to puke on me is romantic, I think we need to reassess this relationship."

John laughs at that and Washington conspicuously turns up "No Ordinary Love," and Alex relaxes entirely, maybe for the first time since they got to Pennsylvania.

He has a million questions, still, and he's sure the lingering unease will return the moment he sits down to write up a report about the case, but right now it's a bright, clear day, he's got John next to him, and he's headed back home. It's not perfect, but it's perfect enough for the time being. The questions, for once, can wait.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> THANK YOU GUYS SO MUCH FOR STICKING WITH ME! I'm super behind on comments, still, and I swear I'll get to those soon, now that I don't have any looming fic deadlines. I know I said this at the end of the first story, but I honestly wasn't expecting anyone to read this verse at all, so to have so many people reading regularly and sharing their thoughts with me has been AMAZING. Thank you, thank you, thank you ♥ ♥ ♥ You're all fucking treasures and I'm incredibly grateful.
> 
> SO, WHAT'S NEXT? Well, there's definitely more to come in this verse! The next "big" story takes place the summer between their first and second year of grad school, and that's the one I'm working on now. After that we have the beginning of year two and then another longer casefic that might address some lingering questions you have after finishing this story ;)
> 
> I don't have a firm timeline on when the next story will be done--I've written maybe 12k words? And it...has a little longer to go yet. We're also entering the holiday season, which means lots of driving back and forth between Boston and New Jersey and whole lost writing weekends. (Also, occasionally I have to do actual work at my day job.) There might be ficlets between now and then, so the best way to stay on top of this shit is to subscribe to the "Team Shithead" series. AO3 will send you an email every time I post something new!
> 
> In the meantime, you can get updates on progress and perhaps the occasional preview of what's to come by following me on tumblr ([@fourteenacross](http://fourteenacross.tumblr.com)) or Twitter (also [@fourteenacross](http://twitter.com/fourteenacross)). I'm trying to get back into the habit of using Tumblr, so I'll probably be cleaning out my likes via queue, but feel free to send prompts or whatever the hell else. If I don't respond right away, it's probably because I only check it once every couple days /o\ I'm much more active on Twitter, but you also have to put up with my whining about work, my commute, shitty Netflix horror movies, etc.
> 
> GOSH I'VE RAMBLED. Thank you all so much, again. You're stars and I don't deserve you ♥

**Author's Note:**

> H'OKAY. HERE'S THE THING. I'm not actually finished with all of this story yet, which is contrary to how I normally post fic. IDEALLY, I'd like to finish it this weekend and have the end ready to post on Monday, as usual. HOWEVER, this weekend is also my annual Halloween bash, so I'm also party planning, cooking for twenty people, and entertaining house guests until Sunday.
> 
> THERE WILL BE AN UPDATE ON MONDAY. But it might not be the whole conclusion--I might have to break it into three parts.
> 
> Thanks for being understanding. You're all GREAT ♥
> 
>  **Update 11/4:** If you are here wondering where the last chapter is, IT'S COMING I SWEAR, I lost a couple days of writing to the aforementioned ear ache. An apology and a treat [here](http://fourteenacross.tumblr.com/post/152746526731/whoops) ♥


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